Dyslexic Heart
by Slovesemmett
Summary: Ten years have passed since Rory Gilmore graduated from Yale. Some things have changed, and it seems that some things are destined to remain the same. Rated T for swears, and for innuendo.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: A new story from me! I'm not sure how often I'll update, but I got this plot bunny stuck in my head and I can't get rid of it, so here it goes.**

**Setting: 10 years after the series finale. Yes, this is a future fic, with lots of flashbacks. **

**Title Note: This is named after one of my favorite Paul Westerberg songs. You should listen to it if you haven't heard it.**

**Disclaimer: As usual, I don't own anything. **

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><p>"I'm sorry the news isn't better Ms. Gilmore," the kindly voice on the other end of the phone told her apologetically.<p>

"And you're sure?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am, I'm sorry."

"Thank you for letting me know," Rory said with as much politeness as she could muster.

"Have a nice day."

She resisted the urge to snort, as if a nice day was possible now. "You too." She hung up the phone and chuckled bitterly. Life was filled with irony, she knew that. She just didn't like it when she was the subject of it.

Rory looked down at the to-do list on her desk and decided that there was nothing that couldn't wait. Her latest article was already set for printing but wasn't due to run for another few days, and the one after that was currently sitting on her editor's desk for review.

She turned off her monitor, pulled her coat on, and grabbed her bag. As she left her office she paused at her assistant's desk, "Amanda, I'm headed out for the rest of the day." It was only 10 am.

"Alright Rory, are you okay?"

She bit the inside of her lip to prevent herself from crying. "Yes, I'm fine," she lied.

"So if Art calls?"

"He shouldn't, but if he does tell him to call my mobile." Art was her editor, a grandfatherly little man, who was a killer editor even if he let his staff call most of the shots. More than likely he'd only call her for a scoop.

"Okay. See you tomorrow," Amanda called as Rory headed towards the elevator.

Rory nodded and continued on her way, wondering to herself if she'd actually make it into the office any time soon again.

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><p>She drove straight home, which was odd for her, because usually the trip required at least one drive through espresso stand, but today she just couldn't be bothered. As she pulled her BMW into the driveway, she hit the button on the visor to open the garage door. She pulled the car into the garage and was silently thankful that he wasn't home. That would hopefully make things… easier.<p>

Rory got out of the car and headed into the house, but instead of her usual routine, she headed straight for the guest room to pull out her suitcase. She pulled it down the hall into the master bedroom, but instead of laying it on the bed to start packing, she left it, and flopped on the bed herself. She could afford a few minutes to wallow.

As she thought about the situation, she began to chuckle that bitter chuckle again. Her ex-husband would just love the irony of this. Her mind wandered back to the beginning…

_Ten Years Earlier_

_As a fresh-faced college graduate, Rory boarded the press bus with the rest of the Obama press corps. This was just what she needed. Hopefully this would keep her busy so she wouldn't have time to miss Logan. Turning him down was the right thing to do, even if it hurt like hell. _

_The first month she felt sorry for her roommates. During the days she was busy enough to forget, trying to get the hang of things and trying to keep the pace of writing new articles every few days about the speech she'd heard many times. The nights were a different story. She was prone to late night crying jags and equally late night conversations with her mother. She lucked out that most of the people she was assigned to room with were sympathetic to her situation. _

_After the first month she started to move on, she became acclimated to the pace, and learned to retell the same story in a different light, she stopped waking up in tears in the middle of the night, and she started calling her mother at more reasonable times. The only downside was now, she had more time during the day to think about what she wanted with her life. _

_She sat on the bus watching the cornfields go by as she thought about where she wanted to go, and who she wanted to be. She knew she still wanted to write, but she wasn't completely certain she still wanted to be a foreign correspondent. She thought about her past loves and her future dreams. She knew exactly how her life would have turned out had she stayed with Dean. They would have stayed in Stars Hollow. She would have worked at the Stars Hollow Gazette, or maybe the Hartford Courant if she felt up to a commute. They would have had a couple of kids, and the biggest adventure she'd have would be the occasional weekend trip to New York or Boston. It would have been a life full of Small Town Saturday Nights. _

_She was equally certain how her life would have turned out had she said yes to Logan. They would have grand adventures. She could work anywhere and they would travel whenever. But on the other side, they'd be under constant scrutiny, both from the media, and the Hartford Society. She knew that no matter how much Logan professed that he was done with his father and Huntzberger Publishing Group, eventually he would return. Whether he liked it or not, the newspaper business was in his blood, and he was damn good at it, and in the end he could never completely ignore his family obligations. They too would have children, but instead of having kids, they'd be producing heirs. _

_Jess was the wild card. Try as she might, Rory couldn't see how her life would have turned out with Jess. Maybe it was because their moments of happiness were fleeting. Or maybe it was because Jess had changed so much over the course of the years there wasn't enough data to extrapolate from. Either way, her curiosity was peaked. She wouldn't go as far as saying that Jess was 'the one that got away', but she also couldn't say that he wasn't. There were so many moments she wished she could go back and change. What if her arm hadn't been broken that night, causing Jess to leave town? What if he'd said one word on any of his many phone calls after he left? What if she'd said 'yes' when he came to take her away after her freshman year at Yale? What if she and Logan never got back together and she was single when she visited him at Truncheon? So many questions, and so few answers - truly a reporter's nightmare. _

_As the summer passed, Rory became herself again. Things that reminded her of Logan still stung a bit, but they no longer threatened to bring her to tears. She got to know her coworkers, and she actually managed a few first dates. None of them were worth writing home about, but she felt like she was making progress. _

_In October, the tour stopped in Philadelphia. She thought about calling Jess, but decided that he was probably still mad at her after she showed up to his grand opening and tried to use him to cheat on Logan. She was surprised to find him leaning up against the wall in the back of the building where the press conference was held. She packed up her stuff and made her way towards him. _

"_What are you doing here?" she asked._

"_I'm happy to see you too Rory," he shot back sarcastically. _

"_Oh! No! I'm happy to see you, I'm just surprised. After last time…" she trailed off. _

_Jess merely shrugged in response. _

"_So what are you doing here?" she asked again._

"_I came to see you. You wanna get a drink and catch up?"_

"_Sure."_

_And just like that, she and Jess were okay. She followed him out of the building and down the street into a small pub. They talked for hours, catching up on each others lives and the Stars Hollow gossip. _

"_How long are you in town?" Jess asked as she climbed out of the cab at her hotel. _

"_What day is today?" she asked. He gave her a funny look. "What? Working every day and traveling all the time screws with my mental calendar."_

"_It's Monday." He stepped out of the cab with her but left the door open so he could get back in it. _

"_Okay, we're leaving Wednesday morning."_

"_Dinner tomorrow night?"_

"_I'd like that." She smiled at him. _

"_Meet me at Truncheon at 7:00 then," he instructed. She nodded, and he leaned in and kissed her cheek. _

"_Night," she called. _

_He climbed back into the cab, and waved from the back seat. _

_The next night they met for dinner, which was followed by late night coffee, which was subsequently followed by breakfast on Wednesday morning before she had to get back to her hotel and board the bus. _

"_I'll call you," Jess told her as he kissed her goodbye outside her hotel. _

"_I'd like that."_

_She didn't expect him to call. In fact she didn't expect to ever see him again. But having finally slept with Jess Mariano, she felt a sense of satisfaction. An itch that had finally been scratched. _

_But Jess did call. At first it was maybe once a week. Then it graduated to a weekly phone call, plus some emails. Then to daily phone calls and emails. Then to nightly phone calls and copious texting throughout the day. _

_By the time the campaign trail ended, Rory talked to Jess more than anyone else. And so, when she was looking for jobs, she applied to a couple of papers in Philadelphia, was well as to several other places. _

_When she was offered a position in Philly on the political beat, she called Jess, and they talked it over. It was a good offer, and it wasn't like she would be taking it just for Jess. But they thought it would be fun to be in the same city. _

_She accepted the position, and just as she was moving to Philly, Jess's roommate moved out, leaving him with an extra bedroom. So Rory moved in. _

_When she moved in, it wasn't like they were a couple. Their one night during the campaign hadn't left either one of them with delusions of a relationship. But, the close proximity soon changed their status. Over the course of about 18 months, they went from friends, to friends with benefits, to boyfriend/girlfriend, to engaged-to-be-married, to newlyweds. _

_While their personal relationship progressed, so did their careers. Rory was a rising star at the Philadelphia Observer, and Truncheon was growing by leaps and bounds. About six months after they married, Rory got her first chance to be a Foreign Correspondent. A three-week assignment in Iraq. This also coincided with their first real argument. _

"_Wow, that was amazing," Rory panted. _

"_You're telling me," Jess said, equally out of breath, as he sprawled across their bed. "I can't believe you're willing to go three weeks without this." _

"_At least I'm doing it now, before we have kids," she shot back with a smile. _

_Jess's face locked up. _

"_What?" she asked. _

_They'd never had a conversation about kids. At this point, work had kept them both too busy to think about anything other than the immediate future. Jess had never expressed an opinion either way, and Rory knew that if she did want kids, it wouldn't be for a long time. _

"_I'm not having kids," Jess told her._

"_Well not right now. That wouldn't make sense at all," she agreed. _

"_No. I'm not having kids ever."_

"_How can you be so sure? With the exception of you, I hardly know what I want next week, let alone for the rest of my life."_

"_I had a vasectomy when I was 20," he told her flatly. _

"_And you didn't feel I needed to know that?" she asked incredulously. _

"_It never came up."_

_"Why?"_

"_Why didn't it come up?" he asked._

"_No, why did you do it so young?" she asked. _

"_I had a scare with a girl I was dating, and decided I never wanted to go through that again."_

"_But…" Rory wanted more information. _

"_Look at my parents Rory. I would never want to do that to a kid," he started._

"_You're not Liz or Jimmy," Rory reminded him. Even though Liz and TJ had been married for years, and hadn't yet screwed up Doula, and Jimmy and Sasha were still going strong, Rory knew that Jess still couldn't get past his own screwed up childhood. She didn't expect him to. _

_He shrugged. "You never made any mention of wanting to have kids, so I just figured you felt the same way I did."_

"_Hey!" Rory started, ready to defend her parents, "I know my childhood wasn't ideal, but that didn't put me off kids forever."_

"_I'm sorry I didn't tell you."_

_Rory remained silent, trying to process the information that she'd never be a mother. _

_After a few minutes passed Jess spoke again, "Rory, say something. Please?"_

"_You mean to tell me we've been wasting money on birth control for the past two years?" she finally said, trying to lighten the situation. She wasn't over it, but she didn't want to spend their last few hours together fighting. _

_Jess chuckled. "Sorry."_

_Time passed, and Rory spent more and more time overseas. While she wasn't 100 percent happy with the fact that she and Jess were never going to have kids, she managed to put it out of her mind. She was enjoying her job too much to be too upset. _

_She was 28 before she felt her biological clock start to tick. Before then she'd heard the occasional tick when she attended baby showers or held her baby brother and sister, knowing she'd never have that. But nothing she couldn't rationalize away. She was still spending about half of every month on the road, so she wasn't at a point where she wanted to try to convince Jess to have his vasectomy reversed. She wasn't 100 percent sure she wanted kids herself, but she thought she might. In the end it didn't matter, that wasn't what drove her and Jess apart. _

_Her most recent trip had taken her to Paris for two weeks, and for some reason she found herself really missing her husband. They'd had an argument before she left about her being gone for their wedding anniversary. This was the first time that she'd had to miss it due to work. So she decided to make arrangements to get home a day early to surprise him._

_When she arrived at Truncheon, straight from the airport, she headed right for his office. Over the years Truncheon had grown into a bigger publishing house, but Jess and his partners had refused to part with their original space. They still had their offices there, and held meetings there. Rory walked past the empty desk that usually was occupied by Janice, Jess's secretary and headed to his office. _

_She paused outside the door to find out if he was in a meeting. _

"_How about tomorrow?" she heard a feminine voice say._

"_Sorry I can't, my wife is due back in town," Jess told her. Rory decided the meeting must have been about over and it would be okay to interrupt._

_She opened to door to find a young blonde, probably 24, zipping her skirt and slipping into her shoes, and she glanced over to see Jess pulling his tee shirt over his head, and tucking it into his unbuttoned jeans. Oddly as she took in the situation, the thing that stood out to her was how little Jess had changed since they were 24. He still spent 95 percent of his time in jeans and tee shirts. The only concession he made was that now the jeans weren't riddled with holes and the tee shirts lacked curse words. _

"_Janice, I told you not to interrupt my meetings with potential authors," he said without looking at the door. _

"_Sorry, I didn't know," Rory replied. _

_Jess froze at the sound of her voice. "Rory?"_

"_I came home early. I didn't want to miss our anniversary." She turned on her heel and headed back towards the front door, luggage in tow. _

"_Rory wait!" Jess called. _

_She stormed out of the building and hailed a cab. Jess was in the cab right behind her, getting home just moments after her. _

"_Let me explain," he started. _

"_You're seeing someone else, what is there to explain? What I saw is pretty much self explanatory."_

"_It was just that once… and I was just so upset about you missing our anniversary," he tried to explain. _

"_That's great Jess. Since I couldn't be here you decided to spend our anniversary fucking someone else? That makes me feel so much better."_

_She headed up the stairs of their town house to the bedroom. Jess chased her up the stairs. _

"_Please don't leave… I'm so sorry."_

"_Get out of my way."_

"_It was only that one time!"_

"_I don't care."_

_That was it. She moved into a hotel and started applying for jobs in other places. She wanted to go home, so she applied mainly in Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts. Given her cv and her portfolio, it didn't take long for her to get another job, and soon she was in New York, starting over. _

Rory didn't think about her marriage to Jess too often. While they hadn't parted in an amiable manner, her mom and Luke had finally gotten married around the same time they had, so eventually they had to at least get back to being civil to each other.

As she sat on the edge of her bed drying her eyes she wondered, had Jess never cheated, would they still be together? Or would the desire to have children finally gotten the better of her and caused her to leave anyhow?

"Get yourself together, Gilmore!" she scolded herself aloud. She stood up and pulled her wheeled suitcase up onto the bed. She unzipped it, and finally set about her original task, packing.

It took her less than 30 minutes to pack enough stuff to stay gone for a week. She could always buy more, and she knew eventually, she'd have to come back for the rest.

She tugged the suitcase down the hall, and paused at her office. She went in and grabbed a piece of paper. He at least deserved a note. Instead of sitting at her desk to write it, she took it to the kitchen, she wanted to leave it somewhere she knew he'd find it.

She sat down on a bar stool in their kitchen and started writing her note. Tears dripped down her face as she wrote, leaving the ink smeary, and the paper oddly bumpy from the patches that gotten wet, then dried. She wrote for a few minutes, and finally got to the bottom of the page. She signed the note, and hugged it to her chest briefly, further crinkling the paper, before setting it back down on the counter. She knew she should leave her wedding ring with the note, but she just couldn't do it. She looked down at her hand, and she just couldn't bring herself to remove the ring.

Rory towed her suitcase to the garage, and loaded into the trunk of her car. She backed out of her garage and watched as the garage door slowly closed behind her. She wiped her eyes again, put on some sunglasses, and pointed the car to the north.

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><p><strong>Double duty for the author's note, sorry about that. Well, what do you think? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Is it overly predictable? Should I keep going?<strong>

**Also, I wanted to say thanks to Miguel51 for taking the time to read this in advance, and encourage me to post. I really appreciate it. **

**Please read and review! Reviews make the muse write... who knew. **

**Thanks for reading**

**S**


	2. Chapter 2

He sat at his desk, working away on the month end reports when he was interrupted by a knock on his already open door.

"Hey Boss, you got a second?" a voice called.

He looked up. "Sure Mike, what do you need?"

"Some of the staff has hacked around the cite blockers we have in place, and before I go in and wreak havoc with their systems I want to make sure it's okay with you."

"Is there a way to make sure all of the work product is protected?" He most certainly didn't want to have a line out his door with people complaining about lost work.

"Yep."

"Then go for it. They have the employee handbook, they know what's allowed and what isn't."

"Thanks. And don't worry, I'll leave your machine alone," Mike said with a grin.

"My machine? I haven't gone to any illicit sites in years!" he protested.

"That may be, but that's not the only thing against policy. That solitaire game you have minimized on your task bar is not allowed either."

"You better clean mine too, goodness knows I don't want to hear about being a hypocrite."

"You'll just play on your phone anyhow."

He laughed. "Exactly."

As Mike left his office, he picked up his phone to dial his wife. The phone rang the requisite four rings before he got her voicemail. _"You've reached the desk of Rory Gilmore at the New York Times. Leave me your name and number and what you need, and I'll call you back as soon as I can. If that's not good enough, you can dial zero and ask for my assistant Amanda Hayes and try to have her track me down for you. Either way, have a great day and I'll talk to you soon." _He hit zero instead of leaving a message.

"New York Times. How may I direct your call?" the operator answered.

"Yes Amanda Hayes please."

"Transferring." He was briefly subjected to some terrible hold music while he waited for Amanda to pick up the line.

"This is Amanda," she answered.

"Hi Amanda. Is my lovely wife in? I tried her desk directly but it went to voicemail."

"Hey Mr. Gilmore, " she teased him, recognizing his voice. "She left the office around 10:00 this morning and said she'd be out for the rest of the day. Try her mobile."

"Alright, thanks. Did she say if she was going out on a story?"

"Nope."

"Thanks Amanda, have a good day."

"You too."

He pressed the depressor to end the call, and then immediately dialed again. Her mobile rang twice, then her voicemail came on. Interesting. She must be interviewing someone for an article and forgotten to turn off her phone, because she never sent his calls to voicemail. _"Hey it's Rory, leave me a message and I'll call you back."_ "Hey! I'm craving Thai food tonight. How about I stop and pick up some takeout on my way home? My 4:00 meeting was cancelled so I should be home around 5:30. Call me back and let me know how you feel about Thai. Love you."

He disconnected the call and went back to work.

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><p>Around two, when he finally took a break for lunch he realized his wife had never called him back, so he tried again. This time it rang once then went to voicemail. Odd. "Hey, it's me. Where are you? Is everything okay? Call me back."<p>

Something was definitely wrong. If she had been in an interview when he'd called the first time she would have shut her phone off to prevent further disruptions. For some reason she was ignoring his calls. In the two years that'd they'd been married he could on one hand the number of times she'd been upset enough at him to ignore his calls. This had to be something serious, but he had no clue what it was.

He was going to go home and see if he could find out what was going on. "Maddy!" he called as he grabbed his jacket. "Reschedule my afternoon meetings, I have a family matter to attend to."

"Yes Sir," she replied. Maddy had only been with him for about a month, and she wasn't yet comfortable enough to question his requests or tell him no. On a day like to day, that was quality he truly appreciated.

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><p>He drove home as fast as he could without breaking any major laws or drawing any unwanted attention. The first thing he noticed was that her car wasn't in the garage. He pulled his Mercedes into its designated spot and headed into the house.<p>

The first stop was the kitchen. There was no smell of fresh coffee brewing so she definitely wasn't home. As he turned to head towards the bedroom he caught a glimpse of a piece of paper tucked next to the coffee maker. He made his way over to inspect it and found it to be a note.

_Dear Logan,_

_I really want to start this letter as 'by the time you read this I'll be gone', but even if it's true, it's a little too cliché. I'm leaving. Apparently I can't give you what you want, and you deserve to get everything you want out of life. I'm sorry. Don't worry, I won't fight you on a divorce, just send the papers to my mom's. I have to go. I wish things were different. _

_I love you always,_

_Rory_

He stared at the letter in disbelief. What the fuck was going on? The paper was crinkled and the ink was blurred with tears. This didn't seem like an angry letter. What had happened to make Rory leave? He wracked his brain to think of anything that had happened recently. Nothing came to mind. What could he possibly want that wasn't with her?

He knew she hadn't found anything damning about him. She already knew it all. He wasn't cheating on her. He loved her far too much for that. And between the Bridesmaid debacle of '06, which he didn't really even consider to be cheating, and what her idiot of an ex-husband did to her, he knew she wouldn't cheat on him either.

And it most certainly couldn't be the same reason behind his first divorce...

_Nine years earlier_

_It was about a year after Rory left before Logan decided to get back in the game. The driving force was finding out at his father's 50th birthday party that Rory had moved in with Jess. He'd spent the night mourning his loss with a bottle of scotch, and in the morning he'd finally given in to his mother's desire to set him up. _

_For the next year he dated society girl after society girl, and finally he was just tired of it. That was when he met Emory. She was a tall, thin, blonde, and over all a decent girl. She was smart enough that he didn't have to explain every joke to her. She was educated enough that she wouldn't embarrass him at business dinners. She was society enough that his parents would be happy. She was gorgeous, the sex was good, and they got along. He didn't love her, but he didn't really think she loved him either. He proposed and she accepted. It was a marriage of convenience. She got his status and he got his mother off his back. They'd live in Palo Alto. They'd visit his family two or three times a year, and in a few years they'd move back East and add a couple of branches to the Huntzberger family tree. They had a plan._

_It wasn't that Logan desperately felt the need to be a father right away, he liked kids well enough, and he spoiled Honor's kids rotten, but he knew that he would want to be a father and that as the Huntzberger heir it was one of his two primary tasks. First, he was expected to continue to grow the Huntzberger Empire, and second, he was expected to produce heirs to continue the tradition. As much as Logan wanted to make it on his own, and have no part of HPG, he was fully aware that he'd eventually end up back there. Even though his family drove him nuts, he still couldn't completely turn his back on them, and part of him wanted there to be a next generation of Huntzbergers. If nothing else he'd like to prove to his father that it was possible to be successful in business and be a good father. Logan may not have loved his wife, but he would most certainly love his kids, and they would know it. _

_The first two years weren't so bad. He and Emory had fun together. He was a little disappointed when he learned that she intended to follow his mother's example of a society wife and spend her days shopping and lunching with the ladies, but he didn't expect her to work once they had kids, so really what was the big deal with a few more years. It's not like he couldn't afford to support them. _

_It was Logan's 29th birthday when things started to change. Two major things happened at once: the snooze button on his biological clock broke, and he and his partners decided to sell their business. Selling the business meant that play time was up. They'd created a successful business, and sold for a tidy profit, and now it was time for Logan to go back to HPG. He wasn't being forced, it was his own idea. Now he knew he could make it on his own, and he had that in his arsenal when negotiating with his father. But going back to HPG meant going back to society, and society meant living under a microscope and pressure to have kids. Surprisingly, Logan was ready. He was faithful to his wife, even if he didn't love her, and he wanted to have kids. Too bad Emory wasn't ready. _

_Since Logan had shared his desire to be a father, they'd all but stopped having sex. Because this occurred at the same time as their relocation, he figured it was the stress of moving. Emory was the one stuck with the task of finding a house in Connecticut and managing the movers while Logan wrapped up the business. Once they were settled in the new place, it would be better. _

_At first it was better. They christened every room in the new house. Sans protection. But then when Emory didn't get pregnant, things got tense. They were still having lots of sex, but it wasn't good sweaty fun, it was like work. But work you couldn't even talk about, because when Logan tried to discuss it, she shut down and accused him of blaming her for them not getting pregnant. _

_Month after month she tearfully told him she wasn't pregnant, and Logan would hold her as she cried, and try to reassure her, but after a while he started to get discouraged. After a year, he went in and had his swimmers tested, hoping that would give them some answers, and that it would be a way to open a conversation that didn't end in Emory crying about him blaming her for something he wasn't blaming her for, and locking herself in the bedroom. He hoped that by him going to the doctor first he could show that he wasn't blaming her, that he thought it might be him, but it backfired. Emory twisted it into a pretzel of him proving to her that it was all her fault. She'd stormed out of the house and not returned home for three days after that. _

_He knew she wouldn't leave him, they had an iron clad pre-nup, and the only way she got anything in a divorce was if a) he cheated on her or b) they had children which she was staying home to care for. Right now, she'd get nothing, and she was far too used to his lifestyle to leave with nothing. _

_She came home as he predicted, and he let the whole thing drop. It was another six months of trying and not talking about it before he finally learned what was going on. _

_Logan was home with the flu. He'd sent the staff home because he didn't want to get them sick, figuring he could make his own chicken soup without much trouble. On his second day at home he'd asked Emory to go to the store and pick up soup and soda crackers. For the first time in a while, she'd obliged him. Almost as soon as she left, the home phone rang. _

"_Hello?" he answered weakly. _

"_Is Mrs. Huntzberger home?"_

"_She's out at the moment, can I take a message?" He looked around for something to write on. He never answered this phone. The staff always answered it. _

"_Sure would you just remind her of her appointment with Dr. Kalani on Tuesday?"_

_A doctor's appointment? "Is my wife okay?" he asked. _

"_Of course sir, it's just a reminder for her quarterly Depo-Provera shot." Had she gone on fertility drugs without letting him know? He smiled at the thought._

"_I'll remind her when she gets home," he said politely. He hung up the phone and pulled out his laptop to google Depo-Provera. _

_By the time Emory returned he was livid. He finally understood why she took everything as blame; it was her fault. _

"_Hey babe, I'm home. Are you feeling better?" she asked as she came into their bedroom. "I brought you a 7up to help settle your stomach."_

_He just stared at her. _

"_Logan, are you okay?"_

"_Dr. Kalani's office called to remind you about your appointment on Tuesday," he said coldly. _

_Her face fell, but she quickly recovered. "Oh good! I meant it to be a surprise, but I finally made an appointment with a fertility specialist to see if I could find out why we can't seem to conceive." _

"_Save it Emory."_

"_What are you talking about Logan?"_

"_The person that called told me what the appointment was for. I know you've been on birth control since we moved back to Hartford." Her face went pale. "Care to explain yourself?"_

_He watched her wheels turn as she tried to come up with a reasonable answer. "You don't love me Logan!" she exclaimed after a minute of silence. "I don't want to have children with someone that doesn't love me, is there something so wrong with that?"_

"_You don't love me either Emory," he reminded her. _

"_Yes I do Logan. I fell in love with you when we lived in Palo Alto. I was hoping you'd fall in love with me too." She started crying. _

"_So you were going to just stay on birth control until I fell in love with you, then try to get pregnant?"_

_She nodded. _

"_You don't think this bit of information would have been useful for me to have?" he asked angrily._

_She stared at him, tears streaming down her face. _

"_Get out."_

"_But Logan," she started. _

"_GET OUT!"_

"_I can't help that I'm not Rory," she mumbled as she turned towards the closet to pack a bag._

"_Excuse me? What did you say?"_

_She turned to face him. "It's not my fault I'm not Rory. It's not my fault you can't get over the past," she told him in a scathing tone. _

"_You don't know what the fuck you're talking about Emory," he spat bitterly. "I know you're not Rory. I don't want you to be Rory. I never wanted you to be Rory."_

"_Rory's the only person you ever loved," she told him as if it was something he didn't know. _

"_Yes. Loved. As in past tense. I'm not still in love with Rory. Hell, the only time I ever think about Rory is when someone else brings her up!" _

"_Well I'm tired of living in her shadow!" she yelled._

"_Who said you were living in her shadow?" He'd never even so much as made a hint of a comparison between Emory and Rory. _

"_Everybody loved Rory!" she shouted. _

_Where was this coming from? "What are you talking about? Who is everybody? My parents hated Rory!" _

"_When ever I'm at the DAR lunches with your mother, all I hear about is all the great things Rory did. 'Remember this event that Rory planned?' 'Remember that event that Rory planned?'"_

"_So Rory's a member of the DAR, so what? She's been a member for years. And yes, she threw some lovely events, but that has nothing to do with me. Hell most of the time she was heavily involved in the DAR we weren't together!" Logan shouted back, as much as his voice would let him. "And really, how does anyone else's feelings about Rory have a thing to do with you?"_

"_Because they all love her, they hate me for being married to you!" she explained as fresh tears slid down her cheeks. _

_Logan sighed deeply. "Emory, you're just grasping at straws. Rory is happily married. Until about two hours ago, I thought I was happily married."_

"_You did?" she asked him incredulously. _

_He refused to answer her. "I want you to pack a bag and get out. You can call my secretary when you decide where to stay and leave her your address, I'll ship the rest of your stuff," he told her calmly. _

"_But Logan," she started. _

"_No. No buts. You've been lying to me for the last year and a half. I'm done. Please leave now."_

_She left, and Logan didn't look back. He quietly filed for divorce. Nothing stays quiet in society for long, but given the circumstances, he did the best he could. _

He knew Rory would never do something like that to him. Mainly because he knew she couldn't ever be that intentionally cruel, but also because she wanted kids just as much as he did. Something else must be wrong, he had to find his wife.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Here's chapter two. I still don't own anything (except maybe Logan's ex wife Emory). I intend this to switch back and forth between Rory's POV and Logan's POV, trying not to overlap too much. <strong>

**I know lots of people are not huge Rogan fans... but here's the truth, I didn't want to invent a character to be Rory's second husband, and given my other choices of guys from Rory's past, Logan was the one that fit the story the best. **

**Here's my plan: I'm going to try to update weekly. To encourage reviews, I'm going to borrow an idea from some of the SVM writers... reviewers will get a snippet of the next chapter, if they so desire. (I would like the review to consist of more than "send me snippet please") I'm also hoping this will encourage me to keep writing. **

**So, let me have it. Do you like it? Do you loathe it? Is it far too predictable? **

**Thanks for reading and reviewing.**

**S**


	3. Chapter 3

Rory drove North for hours, straight through Connecticut, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt she felt for not going to see her mother or her grandparents, on to Boston. As much as she loved her family, she needed to get some perspective on the situation before she shared it with them. Rory knew the best place to gain perspective was with her best friend. Paris Geller would tell her the hard truths, no sugar coating.

She pulled up to a gate at the end of a very long driveway, just outside of Boston, and rolled down her window to hit the buzzer on the gate.

"Yes?" A disembodied voice came from the tiny box.

"I'm here to see Paris," Rory replied.

"And you are?" the voice asked rudely.

"I'm Rory, I'm on the list."

"Please *crackle* while I call, Dr. *Pop*."

Rory assumed that meant she was to wait until whomever was on the end of the gate controls got a hold of Paris before she would be allowed entrance. She smiled at the ass-chewing the guy would get from Paris for making her wait. Rory was probably the one person on the 'admit any time' list at Casa Geller. And soon enough, the gate swung open.

"Please come in Ms. Gilmore, I'm so sorry you had to wait." The once rude voice was now nervously polite.

By the time Rory got to the house, Paris was already standing at the front door waiting for her. She looked the same as she had for years, long blonde hair pulled into a braid, wearing jeans and a Harvard Med tee-shirt.

"What are you doing here Gilmore?" Paris called.

"Can't a girl come see her best friend?" Rory called back as she got out of the car. She left her suitcase in the car for the time being, only grabbing her purse off the passengers seat.

Paris pulled her into a tight hug. "Not that it's not great to see you, but we spent the weekend together in New York two weeks ago."

Rory held onto the hug and tried not to start crying just yet. "I know." Before she could say more her cell phone rang. She could tell by the ring tone that it was Logan. She immediately sent the call to voicemail.

"What's going on Rory?" Paris asked, as kindly as Paris ever did anything.

Paris's unusual kindness made Rory lose the tiny bit of control she had over her emotions, and she started crying in earnest. "I left."

Paris stepped back from their hug, leaving her hands on Rory's shoulders. "Did Huntzberger cheat on you?"

"What? No! Logan would never do that to me." Her best friend gave her a look of disbelief. "Really. Logan didn't cheat. He knows why Jess and I split, he'd never put me in the position."

"Then what happened?" Paris asked. Her doctor's eyes started roaming Rory's body for physical evidence of why she left. Before Rory could even answer, Paris spoke again, "What happened to your arm? Did Logan hit you?"

Rory looked at her in surprise, then down at her arm. There was a small bruise on her upper arm. "Logan didn't hit me! I don't know how I got that. I probably bumped into something while I was walking and reading at the same time. You know how clumsy I am."

Paris gave her a puzzled look. "If he hurt you Rory…" she started, "I still know Krav Maga, I'll kick his ass!"

Rory laughed at Paris's threat. "Do you really think I'm such a bad judge of character that I'd be with someone who hurt me?"

"Well you're leaving."

"Not because of anything Logan did!" Rory shouted. "Geez, you act like I'm an idiot. Logan did not hit me! He's never laid a hand on me that wasn't out of love and affection. You've known Logan just as long as I have, have you ever seen him hurt anyone?"

"Well, he did hit Jess once…" Paris reminded her.

"Guy fights don't count. And Jess was being an ass and deserved it!"

"Okay," Paris finally conceded, "so what's going on then?"

"Can we talk about it inside instead of on your front porch?" Rory asked, taking in her surroundings.

"Come on in. Leave your suitcase, I'll have Jones bring it in later." Paris looped her arm through Rory's and they walked into the house. "I'm assuming you want to stay for a few days."

"Is that okay?" Rory asked.

"You're my best friend, of course it's okay. Same guest room as last time?"

"Sure."

"Why don't you go and wash up? Come down when you're ready and we'll have tea and talk."

"Thanks Paris." Rory walked up the main staircase to the second floor of the Geller mansion, and headed down the hall to find her room. It was the third door on the left. Rory privately called it the Yale Room. It was decorated in white and navy blue, and it was reserved for friends and family, as the walls were adorned with photos instead of artwork. She set her purse on the bed, and headed into the en suite to wash her hands and face.

She noticed in the mirror that her face was a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and her nose was bright red. She shook her head at her image, and took one of the washcloths out of the cupboard to clean herself up. She left the bathroom with the washcloth still in her hand, and went to lay down on the bed for a few minutes before joining Paris for tea, and telling her about the whole mess. She laid down and covered her face with the cool damp cloth. As she lay there, she thought of Logan…

_Four years earlier_

_Rory had been in New York for about six months. She was working for the Times, spending a lot of time on the road. Her divorce was final, but it still hurt. She always thought she was a 'one and done' girl. When she got married, it wouldn't be a spur of the moment thing, or because she had to, it would only be for true love. Somehow she thought that if she got married for the right reasons, it would last forever. Looking back it was silly not to even consider anything to the contrary. _

_New York was a great place to start over. She was closer to her family, and to Lane and Paris, but she was still far enough away to live her own life. She knew if she'd gone all the way home her family would make her life their project. This way she was close enough to visit more often, but far enough away to avoid matchmaking. _

_Since she was back in the area, Paris had taken to calling her to invite her to Yale Alumni events. She had to turn most of them down due to work commitments, but Paris had begged her to come along to a fundraiser for the Yale Daily News. 'It was such a big part of our lives at Yale, and it helped you to become who you are today, how could you not come help?' Paris had a knack for guilt trips. _

_Rory had succumbed to the guilt, which was how she found herself driving to Connecticut on a random Friday night. She'd arrived at the facility hosting the dinner, and gotten checked in when her phone buzzed. It was a text message from Paris – one of her patients found a donor and she had to perform transplant surgery right away and would thus miss the fundraiser. _

"_Damn it Geller," she muttered under her breath. She considered leaving, not knowing who else she'd find in the crowd, but changed her mind. It was a long drive, and really she wouldn't mind seeing Connie and AJ, and maybe Doyle would show up without Paris. Rory sighed, and made her way over to the coat check area and parted with her coat. This way she'd be forced to stay, at least for a little while. _

_She entered the room, and searched for her table. She was at table 23, right near the center. Instead of going to claim her seat and find out who else she was sitting with, she headed to the bar for a drink. _

"_Can I get a Grey Goose and tonic," she asked the bartender. _

_She felt someone come up beside her. "Hey Reporter Girl." She didn't turn her head to look and see who it was. Between the accent and the cologne, she knew. _

"_Can you make that a double?" she asked the bartender. "Hey Finn."_

"_You do remember me! I was worried that you might not since I haven't heard a word from you since before you graduated." _

_She shrugged, not knowing how to respond to him. _

_The bartender returned with her drink, "That'll be 8 dollars."_

"_Put her drink on my tab," Finn told him magnanimously. _

"_You didn't have to do that," Rory said. _

"_I know, but I figure this way, I'll at least get a few minutes to catch up with you. You wouldn't be so rude to someone who just bought you a drink now would you?"_

"_Of course not. So how've you been Finn?"_

"_Just fine Love. Enjoying the life of a hotel mogul. How about you? Married? Kids? Any Pulitzer Prizes I should know about?"_

"_No on all three counts."_

"_So who are you here with tonight?" Finn asked. _

"_Paris. Or at least I was supposed to be. She had to perform emergency surgery so she can't make it. What are you even doing here?"_

"_Come sit with me then Love."_

"_Finn. What are you doing here?" she asked again, growing suspicious at his non-answer from a moment before. _

"_Keeping Logan company. Come say hi at least?" His voice took on a wheedling tone. _

_Logan. She hadn't seen Logan since her graduation. She hadn't made an effort to keep track of him either. Her grandmother, however, couldn't seem to let it go, and so she was still semi-abreast of his situation. She knew he'd gotten married and that he'd sold his successful company in Palo Alto and moved back to Connecticut. She assumed he was back with HPG. However, when she and Jess got together, she started blocking out any sentence her grandmother started that had the word Logan in it. And since they'd split, she'd redoubled her efforts._

"_Sure Finn." He put an arm around her shoulder, to keep her from escaping, and led her towards his table. His was close to the front of the room. _

"_Hey guys, look who I found!" he said loudly. _

_She looked around the table. It was Colin and some girl she didn't recognize, Juliet, Stephanie, Robert, and Logan. There was a seat for Finn, and the aforementioned extra seat. "Hi," she said shyly. _

"_Rory! How are you?" Robert asked loudly. _

"_I'm doing okay Robert, how about you?"_

"_Very well, very well," he told her. "You know everyone else right?"_

"_I think so, except the girl sitting next to Colin," she admitted. She was pretty good with names and faces, so she was fairly certain she'd never met the girl. _

"_Oh this is my wife Rachel," Colin said. "Rachel, this is Rory Gilmore."_

"_Rory Gilmore?" she said, "with the New York Times?" Rory nodded. "Wow, I read your stuff all the time, you're a great writer."_

"_Thanks. So what are you all doing here?" She knew that Logan was the only one who was ever part of the Yale Daily News._

_"Just being supportive. If you've gotta give back, you might as well get a free dinner and a chance to catch up with your friends, right?" Colin answered._

_"I suppose you're right Colin," Rory replied. The table went silent. Rory looked around, and watched everyone at the table look to Logan for cues as to what to do next. "Well, I guess I better go find my table," she said finally. _

"_Who are you here with?" Logan spoke finally. _

"_I was supposed to be here with Paris, but she bailed on me at the last minute," Rory admitted grumpily. _

"_Why don't you take the extra seat at our table?" Logan offered. _

"_I, uh," she paused, she couldn't think of a reason not to. "Thanks."_

_Logan pulled out the chair next to him, and gestured for her to sit down. Rory sat and the rest of the table went back to their own private conversations.\__. _

"_So how's married life?" Logan asked her. _

"_Over," she told him simply, surprised he didn't already know. "How about you? Enjoying wedded bliss?"_

"_Nope. I got divorced almost two years ago."_

"_I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know."_

"_I'm sorry I didn't know about yours either. I'm quite surprised that I didn't know, given the society gossip and all."_

"_I'm pretty sure my grandmother told me you got divorced, but honestly, as soon as she says the name Logan, I stop listening."_

"_Wow Ace, that hurts," he told her. _

"_I didn't mean it like that Logan," she started to explain, "She never approved of Jess. I've spent the last 6 years hearing from her how much I screwed up by not marrying you. And when things went wrong with Jess, the last thing I wanted to hear was a big fat 'I told you so' from my grandmother."_

"_Well I can understand that then. Looking back, I'm pretty sure my mother made conscious efforts to keep me from learning about your divorce." _

"_Shira still hates me?" Rory asked. _

"_How could she not?" Logan said with a smile. "She spent the whole of our relationship telling everyone that you were gold digger who wasn't good enough for me, and then __you__ turned __me__ down. Made her look like a fool. Thank you for that by the way."_

"_Well that was my goal, make Shira look like a fool," she retorted with a smile. _

_Conversation between them came to a halt for a few moments, and Rory took in her surroundings. She looked for people she knew, finding no one other than those sitting with her. _

"_Logan, I'm…" she started, but he cut her off._

"_Water under the bridge," he told her. "I'm over it."_

"_Thanks. So, what are you up to these days?" she asked, changing the topic to one that was more acceptable for mass consumption._

"_I'm running the online media department of HPG. Living in Hartford. You?"_

"_New York Times," she reminded him. _

"_Congratulations on that by the way," he said. _

"_Thanks. You always did believe in me." Logan chuckled to himself. "What's so funny?"_

"_I'm not sure if you'll laugh at this or not," he started._

"_Tell me Logan!" _

"_So your first byline when you got to the Times…"_

"_What about it? It was an article on the newly installed government in Iraq."_

"_I bought a copy of the paper-"_

"_You bought a non HPG paper?" she interrupted. "The horrors!"_

"_Shush. Are you going to let me tell this?" he asked. She nodded. "I bought a copy of the paper, and made about 100 photo copies of the article." _

"_Okay. Why?"_

"_I taped one in the middle of my father's desk. Every day until I ran out of copies."_

_Rory giggled. "Logan! You didn't!"_

"_Sure did. The first few days he didn't say anything, he just had a sour look on his face. But after a week or so, he started to get angry. You know how much he hates to be wrong. I swear the only thing that could be better is you winning a Pulitzer. When you do, I'm going to frame your article and mount it to his wall. With superglue." _

"_That's horrible!" she gasped through her laughter. _

"_He's horrible."_

"_Still that bad?" she asked more gently. _

"_He let up for a while. I got married, made my business a success, and he got off my back. When we came back to Connecticut, he welcomed me back to HPG with open arms, and with respect, not just his usual 'Logan, do as I say' manner." Rory nodded, encouraging him to keep talking. "Since the divorce, he's started treating me like I'm still the screw up I was back in college."_

"_I'm sorry Logan."_

_He shrugged. "It's Mitchum. It's to be expected. Let's talk about something happier. How did you end up in New York?"_

"_I'm not exactly sure that's a happier story," she told him, giving him a look. "After… I decided I wanted to be closer to home. I applied to a lot of papers in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. When the New York Times made an offer, I couldn't resist."_

_The loud sound of feedback coming from the stage called an abrupt halt to their conversation. They spent the next hour eating mediocre food and listening to speakers going on about the importance of the Yale Daily News, as a tradition, to the school, and to the past and future members. Both Rory and Logan got mentions as success stories. Rory blushed furiously, and Logan smiled broadly._

_At the end of the night as they waited for their coats to be returned, Logan asked "So, is your number the same as it used to be?"_

"_Nope. Is yours?" she asked in return._

"_Nope."_

_They stood in silence for another minute or two._

"_I really enjoyed talking to you tonight," Logan admitted. "I've forgotten what it's like to have intelligent conversation that's not completely business related."_

"_I enjoyed talking to you too. You should look me up if you're ever in New York."_

_Logan handed her his card. "Any chance I could get your number?"_

"_I'm not hard to find," she told him with a smile. The coat check girl handed over Rory's jacket, and she slipped it on and headed out the door. _

_That was the start._

Rory woke with a start, she must have fallen asleep. She glanced at her watch, to find that only about an hour had passed. She hurriedly got up, and rushed down stairs to find Paris.

"Paris? Where are you?" she called.

"I'm in the kitchen," her friend called back.

Rory made her way into the kitchen to find Paris sitting in the breakfast nook with a cup of tea and a plate of cookies. "You're such the homemaker Paris!"

"Shut up Gilmore. Nanny taught me to make tea and the cookies are store bought. You know what, you're lucky I'm even here today. I could have been up to my elbows in organs all day long."

"I'm grateful for your efforts Paris. If you weren't home I'd be sitting in your driveway waiting," Rory admitted.

"You ready to tell me what's going on?"

Rory plopped down in the seat next to Paris and poured herself a cup of tea. "You couldn't have made coffee too?" Paris merely scowled at her. Rory took a sip of her tea, then blurted it out. "I can't have kids."

"What are you talking about?"

"Logan and I have been trying for a while and so last week I went to see a fertility specialist. She called this morning with the results. I can't have kids."

"You can't get pregnant? Or your eggs can't be fertilized?" Paris asked.

"I don't know. All she said was that it wouldn't happen."

"And does Logan know this is why you left?"

Rory shook her head. "After what happened with his first wife…" she trailed off.

"Rory, it's not the same!"

"Yes it is! He wanted to have kids, she wouldn't. He divorced her."

"Yes, she WOULDN'T. Not she COULDN'T," Paris reinforced.

"Potato potahto," Rory said with a shrug.

"No it's not the same. Besides, Logan loves you."

"Yeah, and?"

"He didn't love her."

"I know."

"Why on earth would you just leave him over this?"

"I'm surprised you care about Logan, Paris. I seem to remember getting quite the earful from you when we started dating."

"When you were 20 and he was the biggest playboy on the Yale campus!" Paris sighed angrily. Rory just looked at her. "Don't you think Logan deserves to have a say in the matter? You're running away. Leaving him before he can leave you."

"I didn't realize psychology was your field Dr. Geller," Rory said snottily.

"You're textbook Gilmore."

Rory sat in silence for a moment trying to find a way to explain what she was doing. She knew Logan would stay with her even if she couldn't have kids. They loved each other. But she loved Logan so much she couldn't stand it if she was the reason that all of his dreams didn't come true. Before she could try to explain this to Paris her phone rang. It was her mother.

"Aren't you going to get that?" Paris asked.

"It's my mom. I'm not ready to try to explain all of this to her yet," Rory replied. Instead of sending the call to voicemail, which would arouse her mother's suspicions she merely let it ring until voicemail picked up. A minute later, the phone chirped indicating a message.

"It's not that I think Logan will leave me," she started.

"Then what is it?"

"I'm afraid he'll stay."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"Yes. I'm afraid if he stays, he'll resent me later." Tears started streaming down her face again.

"There are other ways to have kids."

"Have kids, yes. Produce heirs, no."

"Really Rory-" Paris started, but she was cut off by the sound of Rory's phone ringing again. It was Lorelai.

"Damn it. I thought I'd have more time," Rory said. Paris gave her a quizzical look. "Logan must have called her looking for me."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I still don't own any thing. In the next chapter, we'll find out what Logan's been up to, and probably a little more about how Logan and Rory reunited. <strong>

**Please read and review… and again, I'll offer a snippet of chapter four for reviews. (Is that bribery?) Thanks so much for all of the reviews I've gotten so far, as well as the story alerts and favorites! You all are the best. **

**Thanks for reading and reviewing,**

**S**


	4. Chapter 4

Instead of picking up the phone to call his mother-in-law straight away, Logan decided to see if he could figure out why Rory left first. He left the kitchen and headed upstairs. The door to the guest bedroom was open, so he wandered in. He found the closet open and Rory's favorite suitcase missing. It was the suitcase she'd used as a foreign correspondent, she could pack for weeks in that thing and return home with clothes that she hadn't worn.

He left the guest room and headed into their bedroom. At a glance, he could already feel her absence. The book she was currently reading was no longer on the nightstand. Her toothbrush, her flat iron, and her makeup case were no longer on the counter in the bathroom. Her favorite pumps were no longer in the closet. But none of this brought Logan any closer to understanding why she left.

One last stop. He headed down the hall again, but this time to her office. Merely entering the room gave him an overwhelming sense of Rory. It smelled like a mix of coffee and oranges. The orange was from her body spray. The only way Rory would have anything to do with fruit was if it was a scent or if it was covered in chocolate. Currently she favored a citrus scented line. He walked around her office, and took it all in. The leather chair next to the window looked as if she'd just vacated it. There was an empty coffee cup and a Pop Tart wrapper on the end table, along with a well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice. The walls were covered in photos from her life. Pictures from Stars Hollow, pictures from Chilton, pictures from Yale. Pictures from her time on the campaign trail, pictures from her travels abroad. Pictures from their wedding. There were only two events that were conspicuously absent from the walls, one was her marriage to Jess. And even then, hints of their relationship were still there. The goofy look on her face in some of the pictures from that time indicated that she was posing and he was the one behind the camera. Her at the airport leaving for her first foreign correspondent assignment. Her office at the Philadelphia Observer. The only pictures Jess was in were the ones from Luke and Lorelai's wedding. He was the best man and she was the matron of honor, as they had beaten Luke and Lorelai to the alter by a few months. Rory looked extremely happy in those pictures. Everyone did. Except maybe Richard and Emily. The other event that was absent from the wall was her relationship with Logan, the first time.

There were no pictures whatsoever indicating that Rory knew Logan prior to the Yale Daily News fundraiser four years ago. Photographic evidence existed, Logan knew that it did, she just didn't have it on display.

After he'd taken in the photos on the wall, he moved over to her desk. Her laptop was missing, but that was to be expected, she took it to work every morning. The calendar that was her desk pad was filled with doodles instead of actual appointments. Sitting on the desk was a small leather bound book. It didn't look like an actual book, but more like a journal. Logan picked it up and examined it. If it was a journal, he'd feel like an asshole reading it, but if it would give him a clue as to what was going on, he'd deal with it later. He started thumbing through it. It was typeset. Not a journal. He found her marker in the middle of the book, it was a strip of pictures from one of street machines. It was pictures of the two of them, before they started dating again. He flipped back to the beginning of the book, and saw the title page. One of Jess's books. He sighed and rolled his eyes. He knew he'd never be fully rid of Jess. He was part of Rory's family, regardless of their failed marriage. He snapped the book shut. Then picked it right back up and opened it to the strip of pictures. "What happened Rory?" he wondered aloud to the pictures.

_A little less than four years earlier_

_After running into Rory at the Yale fundraiser, Logan's life had returned to its prior state. He worked, he ate, he slept, and he had the occasional first date, which was never followed by a second date. It was a month or so after the fundraiser that he found himself headed to New York on business, and decided to see if Rory wanted to have dinner or drinks. _

_It took him a few minutes to track down her number, but she was right, she was easy to find. He dialed her office and sat back in his chair to wait for the voicemail to pick up. _

"_Gilmore," she answered on the third ring. _

"_Oh Rory, hi. I didn't think I'd actually get you," he said, tripping over his words. _

"_Logan? Is that you?"_

"_Yeah." He blushed even though she couldn't see him, embarrassed that he would be so awkward. _

"_How are you?" she asked, glossing over his awkward start. _

"_I'm good. I'm going to be in New York next week, and I thought I'd see if you wanted to get together for dinner or drinks or something."_

"_What days?"_

_He looked at his schedule, "I'm going to be in town the 24th through the 29th."_

"_Bummer, I can't. I'm leaving for a two week trip to Libya on the 23rd. Next time?" _

_"Yeah, that'd be great. Don't forget to wear your Kevlar under your radiation suit," he teased._

"_Well since I'm not trading a nuclear weapon for plutonium, I think I'll be okay, but I'll keep your warning in mind."_

"_Good. So how have you been?"_

"_You know, the usual. Eat, sleep, work, repeat. You?"_

"_About the same. Don't you ever get time for fun?"_

"_Mostly my free time goes into trips to Stars Hollow."_

"_How is your mom?" he asked, honestly curious. _

"_She's good. She and Luke got married around the same time that Jess and I did. No inbreeding jokes please. They're still together, in fact, I now have both a younger brother and a younger sister."_

_Logan chuckled at her joke about inbreeding. "How old?" _

"_Will is four, and Ella is three."_

"_Kids at that age are cute. Honor has three now. Hunter is six, Max is four, and Abby is two and a half." _

"_Wow. How are Mitchum and Shira taking to being grandparents?" _

"_Pretty much with the same detached sentiments they had when Honor and I were kids."_

"_That's sad."_

"_No, what's sad is that Honor has three amazing kids, and instead of fawning all over them, they just give me grief about not producing any heirs."_

"_That really sucks," Rory agreed. _

_There was a long pause in the conversation, and finally Logan spoke, "I'll be in New York the end of next month as well. Will you be in town?" He could hear her clicking on her keyboard, then flipping through pages. _

"_I should be in town. Shoot me an email with your exact dates when you know them and I'll double check my schedule and get back to you."_

"_And your email address?" He wondered if she'd give him her personal address. _

"_R Gilmore at NYTimes dot com," she answered. "I check that one the most." _

"_Okay thanks. Well have a safe trip to Libya."_

"_Enjoy New York, and hopefully I'll see you next month."_

"_Bye Rory."_

"_Bye Logan." He stayed on the line until he heard the click of her hanging up. _

_He hung up his own phone and stared at it in wonder. He'd told Rory more about his life in a three-minute phone conversation than he'd told any of the women he'd dated since his divorce. And she got his Back To The Future reference!_

_A month later, they actually did manage to meet up in New York. _

_He pushed open the doors to the New York Times building and headed to the elevator bank. He knew her office was on the 14th floor. As he stepped off the elevator, he was immediately greeted by a perky blonde sitting behind the front desk._

"_Hi Sir, how can I help you today?" she asked. _

"_I'm here to see Rory Gilmore."_

"_Is she expecting you?" the girl asked. _

"_Not really. We were supposed to meet a bit later, but I'm early."_

"_Can I let her know who's here?"_

"_Logan Huntzberger."_

_The girl blushed bright pink, apparently she knew who he was, not like there was anybody in the publishing world who didn't, but oddly, it made him feel slightly uncomfortable. She picked up her phone and dialed an extension he assumed was Rory's. "Ms. Gilmore, there's a Logan Huntzberger here to see you." She paused for a response then hung up the phone. "She'll be right out."_

_Logan walked over to the sitting area, grabbed a paper, and took a seat. It took Rory less than a minute to get to him. _

"_Logan what are you doing here?" she asked. _

"_My meeting ended early, so I thought I'd come pick you up for lunch, this way I can see your office," he answered honestly. He stood up and put the paper down, and then leaned in to hug her hello. _

"_You know this is going to cause gossip!" she hissed in his ear as she hugged him. "My office is this way, follow me," she said in her normal voice. _

_He followed her down the hall, smiling and nodding as she gave him the tour, pointing out various departments, and writers. They were almost to her office when a graying head popped out of a door. _

"_Who's this you've got with you Rory?" the man asked. _

"_This is my friend Logan. Logan, this is Art Matthews, my editor," she said by way of introduction. She'd purposefully left out his last name, and he knew it. _

"_Logan Huntzberger, pleased to meet you," he said to Art, holding out his hand. _

_The man shook his hand as though he had leprosy. "You're not planning on leaving us, are you Gilmore?" Art asked in a tone that showed he was trying to keep things light, but was actually worried about the possibility of HPG poaching one of his best writers._

_"Logan and I are old college buddies, you have nothing to worry about Sir. He's in town on business and just stopped by to have lunch with me and catch up."_

"_Wonderful," Art said, relief evident in his voice. _

"_Speaking of, we'd better get the tour moving again, I'd hate to miss our reservations," Logan stated, trying to get back to their original purpose. "It was nice to meet you Mr. Matthews."_

"_Uh, nice to meet you too Mr. Huntzberger."_

"_Please, it's Logan, Mr. Huntzberger is my father."_

"_Ah yes, well, say hello to your father for me. I used to work with him once upon a time in Washington."_

"_Will do."_

_Rory grabbed Logan's arm and pulled him down the remaining length of hallway before they got to her office. "If your little impromptu visit makes my life around here difficult in anyway, I will cut you Huntzberger!" she told him vehemently, once she'd closed the door to her office. Well as vehemently as she could with a smile on her face._

"_Relax Ace, if nothing else, they'll suck up to you for a while to make sure you're sticking around." He looked around her office. It looked like her, piles of research everywhere, and post-it notes covering most surfaces. "Some things never change," he said, gesturing to his surroundings. "So this is where the magic happens?"_

"_Not really," she replied. "I spend a lot of time on the road, so it's gotten to be that I write my best in a loud place, in a cramped, uncomfortable position, with my laptop battery dying."_

_He laughed at her description of writing in war zones. "So do you head over to gang territory when you've got to write a local story?"_

_She laughed in return. "Are you ready to go get lunch?"_

"_Yes ma'am."_

"_Do you really have reservations?" she asked suspiciously. _

"_Weeellll," he wheedled. _

"_Logan! Do not joke about food with a Gilmore! You know the consequences."_

"_I don't have reservations, but I'm pretty sure I can get us in anywhere you wanna go. And I intended to buy anyhow."_

"_Fine." She pulled out her coat and Logan took it from her to help her into it. Then she led the way back to the front of the office, and into the elevator so they could go for lunch. "I'll be back in an hour or so," she called to the perky girl at the desk. _

_They ended up grabbing lunch at a nearby diner, nothing fancy, but really good food. "Is this place your new Luke's?" Logan asked as he took a bite of his cheeseburger. _

"_There will never be a new Luke's," Rory replied, shocked at the suggestion. "I like this place in it's own right. My mom and Luke also approve, even though Luke doesn't usually eat the fare at his own diner." _

_Logan laughed, remembering that the gruff diner owner was somewhat of a health nut when left to his own devices. "I do miss Luke's coffee," he admitted. _

"_You used to give me such a bad time about it!" _

"_I know, but he really does have the best coffee."_

"_You live close enough that you could go get someone once and while you know," Rory reminded him._

"_Yeah, but as good as the coffee is, I'm not sure it's worth risking death. Last I remember Luke was a charter member of the We Hate Logan fan club."_

_Rory snorted. "After Jess… well, he just needs to keep his opinions to himself."_

_She opened the door to the ex spouse discussion, but Logan wasn't ready to go there just yet, so he changed the subject, back to something safer, work. _

_A while later, Logan's cell phone rang, breaking them out of their conversation. "Huntzberger," he answered quickly. _

"_Logan where the fuck are you?" a very pissed off voice asked. "We were supposed to meet 45 minutes ago."_

"_Honor! I'm so sorry, I'll get there as soon as I can, and I'll tell you all about it when I'm there." He looked over at Rory to find her scrolling through messages on her phone. _

"_This better be good Logan," his sister threatened. _

"_It is." He hung up the phone. "So I guess our hour lunch went a little long," he said looking up a Rory rather sheepishly. _

"_A little long? It's been two and half hours! We completely lost track of time."_

"_Let me walk you back to work. You won't be in trouble will you?" he asked, genuinely concerned. _

"_I think I can find my way back to the office alone, it's only a few blocks. You go meet Honor since you're already late. Say hi to her for me."_

"_I will." They both stood up, and Logan dropped a handful of bills onto the table before helping Rory back into her coat. "It was good to see you."_

"_Likewise. We should do it again next time you're in New York."_

_And just like that, it became tradition. Whenever Logan was in New York, he'd call Rory, and if she was in town, they'd get together. At first it was just lunch, or dinner, or coffee. Then it became lunch, and dinner, and coffee. Soon it became reciprocal, when Rory was in Connecticut, she'd stop and see Logan too. She, however, seemed to make it a policy to never meet him at work. _

_They were just friends. They would talk about work, and life, their families and bad first dates. Logan had forgotten what it was like to have a friend that understood so many parts of his life so well. He'd forgotten what it was like to talk to someone that he hadn't known all of his life, and yet still had no interest in what he could do for them. Since high school, virtually every person Logan came in contact with wanted something from him. His money, his connections, his status. The only person that wasn't like that, excluding Colin, Finn, and Stephanie of course, was Rory. That was one of the few things that hadn't changed about Rory over the years. _

_It was a Friday afternoon, about six months in to Rory and Logan's friendly visits, and they were again, sitting in that diner in New York. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. _

"_What do you have going on this afternoon?" Rory asked as she dragged one of her fries through a puddle of ketchup. _

"_I've got a meeting at the Daily News at 3:00, then dinner at 6:30 with some of the editors from the Post."_

"_Lame."_

"_Why, something you'd rather do?" he asked. _

"_I was thinking today would be a great day for Coney Island." She looked wistfully out the window._

"_You can blow off the rest of your day for an amusement park?"_

"_Sure. I'm working on articles for the next few weeks, but I have plenty that are ready to go now."_

"_I can't cancel dinner, but I bet I could postpone it. If I moved it to 8:00 would that give us enough time?" he asked._

"_Logan, you don't have to rearrange your schedule on my whims. My mom will be in town soon, and I'll drag her out there. Or maybe I'll call Paris and get her to come for a visit, it's no big deal."_

_He didn't respond to her, he was too busy dialing. "Mark Jamison please," he said. He waited while he was transferred. "Mark, it's Logan Huntzberger."_

"_Hello sir, what can I do for you?"_

"_Something's come up and I was wondering if I could possibly delay our meeting until Monday."_

"_Of course Mr. Huntzberger. Shall we say 10:00 am on Monday?" Mark replied accommodatingly. _

"_That sounds perfect, thank you." He snapped the phone shut. "Now we can go to Coney Island."_

_Rory looked at him in awe. "You just blew off a meeting for an amusement park."_

"_I didn't blow it off, I rearranged it."_

"_Now you'll have to make an extra trip to New York."_

"_I'll just stay in town, it'll be fine. It'll give me a chance to spend some time with Honor and Josh and the kids. Now let me call my assistant and have her rearrange the dinner reservations." Once that was done, he took one last sip of his chocolate shake, and stood up. "Come on, let's go ride some rides!"_

_They spent the afternoon riding rides, eating greasy fair foods - Rory insisted on Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs, frozen custard, funnel cake and cotton candy - and playing boardwalk games. Logan won Rory a teddy bear at the Strong Man booth, and Rory won him a goldfish at the Ping Pong Ball toss. _

"_What am I going to do with a goldfish?" Logan asked as he held up the bag. They were walking back towards the entrance to head back to the city._

"_Keep it in your office."_

"_How am I going to get it home?" _

"_On the airplane with the rest of your stuff."_

"_It can't last that long in a plastic bag, can it?"_

"_So buy it a bowl."_

"_You just have all the answers don't you?" he said with a smile. _

"_They're not hard questions Logan. Haven't you ever had a fish before?"_

"_No pets." _

_Rory looked up at him, her eyes filled with something that looked a lot like pity. "Never?"_

"_Nope." She wrapped her arm around his and gave it a squeeze. _

"_I'm sorry."_

"_Yeah, well. It happens. Oh look! A photo booth, we should totally do that!" he exclaimed to change the subject and lighten the mood. _

_They climbed into the booth, and prepared for the pictures. The first one was one of them smiling side by side, then Logan tickled Rory, so she was laughing like a maniac in the second one. To get him back she gave him a noogie, so his hair was all messed up for the third one. The final one showed her with a look of shock on her face as he leaned in and kissed her moments before the flash went off._

"_If these turn out, I'll make a copy for you," he told her as they climbed out of the booth. _

_She walked beside him in silence. He knew from past experience that she was processing what had happened. It was just a quick peck, but his lips hadn't touched hers in almost 7 years, and still, he got the same tingle he used to get. He wondered if she did too. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as they walked back to the car. Her hand came up and rubbed her lips gently. _

"_I'm sorry Rory," he finally said. "I didn't plan it, it just seemed like the thing to do at the time."_

_She stopped walking and turned to face him. He stopped a few steps from her, not sure how she was going to react. She closed the distance between them, and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him to her, and then she kissed him. Not the peck he'd given her, but an actual kiss. It felt like there were fireworks going off in his head, but just as soon as he could get into it, she backed away. _

"_I'd forgotten that kisses could be like that," she admitted as she blushed. _

"_Me too."_

He stared down at the strip of pictures in his hand. Their kisses were still like that. Every time he kissed her, he wanted more. It had been 3 and a half years since that first kiss at Coney Island, and yet each kiss was just as exciting as that first one. He couldn't just let her walk away; he had to figure out what was wrong, and how to fix it.

He picked up his phone to dial Lorelai, but decided to try a different tactic first. As much as he knew Rory loved Lorelai, she still wasn't Logan's biggest fan, and since Rory's note professed that she still loved him, maybe that would send her somewhere else first. He scrolled through his contacts until he found the one he wanted, then hit send.

The phone rang twice before a familiar voice picked up. "Geller."

"Hi Paris, it's Logan. Don't hang up," he said in a rush. He could hear that she was still on the other end of the phone, but she didn't say a word. "Rory left me, and I don't know why. Have you talked to her? Have you seen her?" Paris was silent a while longer. "Please Paris, I'm worried about her. I love her, you know that."

"She's here," Paris finally admitted quietly.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I don't know, she hasn't told me yet."

"Will you tell me when you find out?"

She snorted. He took that to mean not just no, but hell no.

"Okay fine, don't tell me. Just as long as she's safe."

"You really have no clue why she left?" Paris finally asked.

"None. I thought everything was fine. We haven't argued about anything lately. Family drama is at a minimum, and work is going well for both of us. I honestly have no clue at all as to what's going on."

"Does Lorelai know?" Paris asked.

"I thought I'd try you first, but I guess I'll call her next."

"Logan," Paris started.

"Yeah?"

"I know you love her. If something happens, and she's not safe, I'll let you know."

Given the best friend code, that was the most he could hope for. "Thanks Paris."

"But, if you just show up here trying to take her home before she's ready, I'll kick your ass," Paris informed him.

"I stand warned," he replied. "I don't want her to be miserable Paris. If she's not happy with me, as much as it will kill me to let her go, I'll do it." His eyes stung as they filled with unshed tears at the thought of not being with Rory any longer.

"I'm sure it'll all work out," Paris told him.

"Thanks Paris."

"Bye Logan."

He hung up the phone and stared at for a moment before he dialed Lorelai's number. He dialed her mobile instead of the house or the Inn, not really wanting to take the chance of having to talk to anyone else.

She answered on the second ring. "Hey Kid, did your battery die again?" she said in lieu of greeting. Rory often used his phone to call her mom when she forgot to put her own phone on the charger.

"It's Logan," he said.

"Logan, what's wrong?" Lorelai asked. He could hear panic in her tone.

"Have you talked to Rory today?" he asked in return.

"No. Is she okay?"

"I… I don't know."

"How do you not know? You're her husband, you're supposed to know these things," Lorelai told him, as if he didn't know. She was getting annoyed, and he assumed it was the worry. Well that and the fact that she wasn't super thrilled with her daughter's choice in husbands.

He sat in silence for a moment, trying to put the words together.

"I came home to find a note that she was gone. That she wouldn't fight a divorce, and to send the papers to your house," he finally told her.

"Why on Earth would you want to divorce her?" Lorelai asked him angrily.

"I wouldn't! I don't. That's why I'm calling. Something happened, and I don't know what it is. I was hoping that you would know. Especially since she said to send the papers to you!" He was losing control of his emotions, and had raised his voice. "I'm sorry Lorelai, I didn't mean to yell."

He half expected her to bite his head off. Instead she merely huffed on the other end of the phone. "It's okay. I can tell that you're not quite your usual self at the moment."

"So do you have any idea what's going on?" he asked hopefully.

"No, I don't. I haven't talked to Rory since last night, and everything was fine then." She stopped talking, and they just sat there in silence for a moment before she spoke again. "I haven't seen her either. If she wants stuff sent to my house, I assume that means she'll be staying with me for a bit."

Logan didn't know how to respond to that. He shrugged, then realized that Lorelai couldn't see him, and verbalized his thought, "I don't know."

"What time did she leave?"

"I don't know exactly. She left her office around 10 this morning, and when I got home at 2:30 or so, she was already gone."

"She should be here by now then!" Lorelai said, the anxious tone from earlier, returned to her voice.

"She's at Paris's," he admitted. "But Paris has no clue why she's there yet."

"I'll call her," Lorelai said.

"Good luck. She's not taking my phone calls," he said sadly.

The phone was quiet again for a minute. "I'm sure it'll all work out for the best Logan." He was sure she was trying to be reassuring, but he knew that she meant for the best for Rory.

"I know it's a lot to ask, but if you find out what's going on, will you let me know?" She let out a single, sarcastic 'HA' in response. He expected as much. "I just want her to be happy Lorelai, honestly."

"I know Kid. I'll do what I can." It wasn't much, but it was more than he expected from Lorelai Gilmore Danes.

"Thanks."

The phone disconnected, and he began to pace, completely unsure of what to do next.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I still don't own anything. Oh except maybe Luke and Lorelai's kids and Honor and Josh's kids. <strong>

**Note, my time line is probably screwy, I have no idea how long it takes to get from New York to Boston by car, forgive my lack of research. And Logan's conversation with Paris takes place while Rory is napping in the guest room. **

**Please read and review. Reviews will get a teaser from Chapter Five!**

**Thanks **

**S**


	5. Chapter 5

"Hello?" Rory answered with a sigh on the third ring.

"What's wrong? Are you all right?" her mother said.

"I don't really want to talk about it right now, can I call you back?" _Damn it Logan, couldn't you have waited just a few more hours? _she thought.

"No! At least tell me if you're okay."

"I'm not in mortal danger," she said evasively. She couldn't say that physically she was fine, because she wasn't. She couldn't have kids and that was just as much a physical problem as it was an emotional one.

"Rory, what's going on? You're scaring me. Did Logan cheat on you?"

Rory let out a scream. "Why does every one think Logan would cheat on me?" she yelled. "The only thing Logan ever did that came close to cheating was the Bridesmaid Debacle. It was more than a decade ago, and Logan thought we were broken up." She never thought she'd see the day she was defending that mess, but she was so tired of everyone assuming that Logan would do something like that to her. "Jess is the asshole that decided to sleep with someone else on our anniversary because he was bent out of shape that I had to work!"

"Rory, calm down," her mother told her.

Paris had stood up from the table they were sitting at and made her way across the room to give Rory some space. Rory took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

"So Logan didn't cheat. I got it. What happened then?" She could hear her mother's unspoken words _'So what __did__ Logan do then?'_

"Logan didn't do anything."

"Then why did you leave him?" Lorelai asked. "He told me you told him to send the divorce papers to my house."

Rory groaned, of course Logan would tell her mother was what going on. He would have assumed she would know. "I don't want to talk about it right now."

"Logan is worried out of his mind, and as much as I enjoy seeing him sweat, I'm worried too."

She sighed. "I'm going to stay with Paris for a few days, and try to get things figured out in my head, then I'll come see you and tell you all about it."

"Why are you staying with Paris instead of me?" Lorelai asked. Rory could hear the hurt in her voice. Her mother had always been her best friend; the one she'd run to when she needed help, and she could tell it hurt her feelings not to be that person this time.

"I don't want Will and Ella to see me like this," Rory told her. This was mostly the truth. She didn't want to put on the happy face for her siblings. And she didn't want the jealous feeling to rear its ugly head. She knew her mother loved her, but she was no longer the most important person in her life anymore, she had to share that title. She also didn't want the whole town to know what was going on. At least not yet.

"Do you want me to come stay with you at Paris's?" Her mother really was worried about her.

"Thanks Mom, but I think Paris's maternal instincts will be all that I can handle."

"Okay Kid," she said reluctantly, "but you call me if you need anything. Say the word and I'll be there. Sookie and Michel can handle the Inn, and Luke can manage both Ella and Will for a few days."

"Thanks Mommy. I'll call you soon."

"I love you Rory."

"I love you too." She hung up the phone and began to cry.

"Paris!" she called.

"I'm coming," Paris said as she rushed back into the room. "I was just trying to give you some privacy."

"Logan called you too, didn't he?" she said, as Paris sat back down with her tea.

Paris nodded. "While you were upstairs. I didn't tell him anything other than you were here and you were safe. He's really worried."

Rory shrugged it off.

"This isn't like you Rory. Logan has absolutely no clue what's going on. He's concerned about you, and scared that he's done something wrong and he has absolutely no idea what it is."

"When did you become Logan's champion?" Rory asked sarcastically.

"I'm not," she started. "I'm not! I've just been where he's been."

Rory looked at her best friend curiously.

"When Doyle left, I had absolutely no clue why. I thought everything was fine, and it turned out I was so wrong." Tears sprang up in Paris's eyes.

"It's not the same Paris."

"How is it different?" she asked. "Up until he got home today, Logan thought your life together was perfect. I felt the same way when Doyle left." Rory remained silent, listening to her friend. "In hindsight, three years later, I can see why Doyle left. I was never home. I cancelled vacations at a moments notice for work. I didn't want to have kids…"

"Paris it's not your fault. Doyle should have told you these things were bothering him and given you an opportunity to change things before he just walked away," Rory said consoling her.

"How is what Doyle did different than what you're doing? Why doesn't Logan deserve to at least know why you left?"

She slammed her teacup onto the table and stood up, angry at Paris for making a very valid point. "Logan does deserve to know, even though he can't do a thing to change it. And I will tell him. I just need to figure it out for myself first. Okay? I can't deal with his emotions right now because I can't even deal with my own." She headed out of the kitchen to go back upstairs to her room.

"I didn't mean to make things worse Rory," Paris called after her.

She stopped and turned around. "You didn't Paris. You're right. I came to you because I knew you'd tell me the hard truths." She smiled a wan smile. "But that doesn't mean I have to like them. I'm going to go lay down again for a while, try to think things through. Can we order Chinese for dinner?"

"Sure."

* * *

><p>Rory walked down the hall and up the stairs, back to the Yale room. She entered the room and burst into tears. The silent trickles were now full on sobs. She collapsed in the chair and just let them come. Poor Logan. She felt bad for leaving the way she did, but she didn't know what else to do. She knew he would comfort her and reassure her, and that he'd tell her he still loved her and everything would be alright, and she just needed to process things on her own first. Everything would not be all right. How was it fair to expect Logan to deal with her shortcomings? She wasn't sure she could imagine her life without him, but he deserved the chance to be happy. To be married to someone that would give him the kids he so badly wanted. Maybe she should have listened to her mother.<p>

_Three and half years earlier_

_Rory had been perfectly content being just friends with Logan. She'd forgotten how much she loved talking to him. He challenged her. He understood her pop culture references, he understood her job, and most of all he understood her family and society. Jess could understand the pop culture and the job, but he never could get a grasp on her family. Maybe it was because of his own family, but he always rolled his eyes and made derogatory comments when Rory had to go to some obligatory family function. He couldn't even fake nice for a few hours with her grandparents or her father. It only took a year or so for her to get to the point where she stopped trying to get him to come home and visit with her. Even if he did make it back to Stars Hollow, she made the trips to Hartford and Boston on her own, always pleading work as the excuse for Jess's absence. _

_She had no expectations or desires to be more than friends with Logan. She enjoyed talking about bad dates with him. She enjoyed spending time with him. But they truly were just friends. Until he kissed her in the photo booth on Coney Island. It had surprised the hell out of her. She felt that spark. The same spark she'd always felt with Logan. _

_Kissing Logan had always been exciting. No matter the circumstances, the undercurrent was always excitement. Years ago at Yale, she thought it was Logan's vast amount of experience that made it feel exciting. But now as she had a wider sample to compare to, she realized it was just Logan. Kissing Dean had always been nice, even after they got back together when he was getting divorced, his kisses still had the same nice quality about them. Sweet and innocent, the stuff puppy love is made of. Jess's perpetual bad boy image seemed to flavor his kisses with a hint of danger. Even when they were married Rory still felt like she was about to be caught doing something naughty when she was kissing him. Those first dates that weren't so horrible that they managed to end in kisses each had their own flavors too, running the gamut from fun to lazy to intense, each kiss had invoked a different feeling. _

_They spent the ride home from Coney Island assuring each other that the kisses were just harmless flukes, and that nothing had to change. As Logan had dropped her off at her building, he told her he'd call her over the weekend since he was still in town and they'd get brunch on Sunday. She nodded in acceptance, then leaned over the center console and hugged him goodbye, bussing a quick kiss on his cheek, and reminding him to say hi to Honor and Josh for her. Despite the mutual assurances that it was just a kiss Rory couldn't help but smile._

"_Good evening Ms. Gilmore," the doorman greeted her as she entered her building. _

"_Hey Marcus, any thing exciting happen today?" she asked as she stopped to check her mail. _

"_You got a package." He pulled a smallish box out from behind the counter, and had her sign for it. She recognized the address for Truncheon Books in the corner and the messy handwriting that addressed the label to her. _

"_Thanks," she said as she took the package and headed to the elevator. _

_She got off the elevator on the 15th floor, and walked down the hall to her apartment on the far end. She slid the key in the lock and pushed open the door. She headed towards the kitchen dropping her keys and the mail on the small table by the door. She set the teddy bear from Coney Island, the strip of photos she'd grabbed as she ducked out of the car, and the package from Jess on the island in her kitchen while she started a fresh pot of coffee. As the coffee brewed, she ruminated over the package from Jess. It was probably just mail that had been forwarded to his new place instead of hers, since they'd sold the townhouse when they got divorced. But for some reason she didn't want to open the package, and she was angry at Jess for ruining her evening from hundreds of miles away. _

_She'd had a great day, and not had a single errant thought about Jess. It was a banner day. Even though they'd been divorced for about a year, she still thought of him almost daily, even if it was mostly in anger. In the beginning, everything made her think of Jess. And when she first moved to New York, she wanted to ask him a million questions about the city: places to eat, places to see shows, places to shop. But she didn't. As time passed, it was typically something small that reminded her of him, but it happened almost daily. A street vender in a ratty Clash tee-shirt, or a kid on the subway reading a worn copy of Howl, or the smell of his favorite beer when she was getting a post work drink with her colleagues. It was always something. Today, it didn't happen. Surely there were a million things that she went by, that had she noticed, she would have thought of Jess, but she was having so much fun with Logan, that she didn't notice a single one. She almost wished she'd gone to the dinner with the Post editors with Logan so she didn't have to deal with this yet. Almost. Rory poured her self a cup of coffee and settled onto one of the barstools surrounding the island. She exhaled loudly and grabbed the package. She ripped open one end and tipped it up, allowing the contents to spill onto the island. It was mostly mail. Stuff from her professional organizations in Philly, notifying her of upcoming events, and reminding her that her memberships were about to lapse. Underneath those was a small bound book, with a sticky note on the front. _

_Dear Rory,  
>I've told you before, and I'll tell you again I'm sure, I'm sorry. I screwed up. But, one good thing came out of this, I started writing again. This is just the mock-up, I don't want to publish it until you've had a chance to read it.<br>Love,  
>Jess<em>

_She flipped open the cover of the book. __**The Screw Up – by Jess Mariano**_

_Then to the next page, _For RG who's helped me more than anyone should ever have to help another _Tears sprang up in her eyes. She turned to the first page of the first chapter and started reading. _I've been screwed up my whole life. From the way it started, to the way it ended, it's all been one big screw up. It started with my screwed up parents, two drunk, high, ships that should never have passed in the night…

_Rory picked up the book and her coffee cup, and went into the living room to curl into her favorite chair and read. As much as she hated Jess for what he did, she could never completely hate him, and she would never be able to resist the draw of his work. _

_The ringing phone brought her out of the world Jess had created. It was the house phone, so it had to be the doorman. "Hello?" she answered._

"_Hi Ms. Gilmore, it's Marcus, there's a Logan Huntzberger here to see you, can I send him up?" _

_She looked at the clock on the wall, it was well past 11, she'd been reading for almost three hours and hadn't even noticed. "Sure, send him up." She smiled and hung up the phone. She looked down at the book in her hands, and grabbed the nearest scrap of paper to use as a bookmark, which turned out to be the strip of photos from the park. She tucked the book into the drawer of the side table that was next to her favorite chair, and quickly rushed around her apartment tidying up before Logan arrived. _

_She had just finished starting yet another fresh pot of coffee when she heard a soft rap on her door. She opened the door to find him lost in thought and running his hands through his hair._

"_Hey Logan, come on in," she said. _

"_Hey. Sorry to show up so late."_

"_It's fine I was up. How was your dinner?"_

"_It was fine I think."_

"_You think?" How could Logan not know how his dinner was?_

"_I was a little distracted."_

"_Oh really?" she asked with a smile._

"_Yeah really."_

"_Pretty waitress catch your eye?"_

"_Nope. A writer of all things! One kiss and for some reason I can't stop thinking about her."_

"_It must have been some kiss."_

"_It was. Has that ever happened to you?"_

"_Being distracted by a writer?" she asked to give him a hard time. _

"_No. Just one kiss completely taking over your thoughts."_

"_Yep. Funnily, it happened to me today." Until Jess's damn book had shown up in her mail._

_That seemed to be all the signal he needed, before he closed the distance between the two of them and kissed her soundly again. _

"_Logan," she sighed when they came up for air. _

"_Yeah?" he whispered. _

"_What are we doing? We're just friends."_

"_Maybe we're more than friends now."_

_She looked into his warm brown eyes, and she saw the lust she expected to see, but also a look of longing she didn't expect. "I don't know," she whispered, not wanting to completely break whatever spell they were under. "You live in Hartford and I live here."_

"_I've been thinking of moving my office to New York for a while now."_

"_Logan, I can't ask you to do that for something that may fizzle out in a week."_

"_Rory, I was thinking about moving the office before I saw you at that fundraiser. I love the job that I do for HPG, but I think I could do it better if I was out from under Mitchum's thumb. New York is the logical choice since I'm here once a month for business if not more. Besides, it's not like it would be instant."_

"_What about our families?" Rory asked. _

"_What about them? They're not quite the Montagues and the Capulets."_

"_I don't know, the Huntzbergers and the Gilmores seem to be their modern day incarnations."_

_Logan sighed an annoyed sigh, and Rory thought maybe she'd pushed a bit too far too quickly. "Hell it was one kiss, and I just want to take you out on a date. It's not like we're getting married."_

_He had a point; she was putting the cart way before the horse. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "Last time…" she trailed off. _

"_Rory, are you still in love with me?" Logan asked out of the blue._

"_What? No. Are you still in love with me?" She was trying figure out where he was coming from._

"_No."_

"_And this means?"_

"_Any thing we do now has nothing to do with us years ago. It's not like we've spent the past six and half years pining for each other. We were once together. We broke up. We moved on. This is something completely new."_

"_Okay. I like that," she admitted. "We're not the same people we used to be." Logan nodded in agreement. "But our families are."_

"_So we don't tell them."_

_"Logan!"_

"_I'm not saying we never tell them. I'm just saying that while it's new, and we're just starting to date, why give them the chance to get worked up about potentially nothing?"_

"_I see your point," she conceded. _

"_Good." He leaned in and kissed her again._

* * *

><p><em>For the next six months Rory and Logan managed to date under the radar. Logan adjusted his business trips to New York scheduling meetings on Fridays and Mondays, requiring him to stay for weekends. And Rory's trips to Stars Hollow dwindled by half. She'd spend every other trip with Logan, not even letting her family know she was in the area. In New York no one cared who they were. Anyone in the industry knew they were friends, and so seeing them together was no big deal. In Hartford however, it was a different story. On the rare occasion that they were together, they pretty much stayed in. Take out and old movies. If they were spotted together the gossip circles would go into overdrive. <em>

_It was one of the trips to Hartford when their cover got blown. _

"_Do you want Chinese or pizza?" Rory asked holding up the menus from the drawer in Logan's kitchen. _

"_Neither. I want to go out to eat," Logan told her. _

"_But…" she hesitated. _

"_My dad's in London on business and my mom's at a 'spa' in Arizona." His use of finger quotes around the word spa told Rory that Shira was either in rehab or getting plastic surgery again. "And your grandparents are at their house in the Vineyards. We won't run into any of them."_

"_How did you know my grandparents were out of town?" she asked curiously. _

"_I ran into them at a function last week."_

"_What about the rest of society? There's bound to be someone to see us out together."_

"_Then we're two old friends catching up."_

"_Okay."_

_An hour later they were whisked into a cozy booth at an Italian restaurant that Rory loved in Hartford. _

"_We're all clear," Logan whispered as he took Rory's coat and urged her into the u-bend of the booth. She looked at him quizzically. "I don't see a single person I recognize in the entire restaurant." _

"_Good." She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the booth with her so instead of sitting across from each other on either end of the booth, they were sitting together in the center. _

_The food was good, and the wine was good, and the company was spectacular. Rory enjoyed her lobster ravioli as well as some of Logan's chicken saltimbocca, they shared a bottle of good Chianti and a large slice of tiramisu for dessert. Rory was removing an errant chocolate shaving from the edge of Logan's mouth with her own when she heard a familiar voice call her name. _

"_Rory?"_

_Her head shot up so quickly that had Logan not been just as startled and pulled back, they would have knocked heads. _

"_Hey Lorelai," Logan said. _

"_Mom!" She turned her head to see her mother and Luke standing next to her table. "What are you guys doing here?"_

"_Will and Ella are having a slumber party with the Bellevilles, so we thought we'd go out for date night," Luke explained awkwardly. Lorelai stood next to him with her mouth agape. _

"_Mom, say something," Rory said after another minute of silence. _

"_How long?" Lorelai asked. _

"_Six months."_

"_Why?" _

"_Why what?" Rory asked, confused by the question._

"_Why didn't you tell me?"_

_Rory bit her lip trying to decide what to say. She knew if she told her mother the absolute truth, her feelings would be hurt, and Luke would be mad too. Instead she decided to sidestep the situation for a little bit longer. "Why don't you two enjoy your dinner, and I'll come over tomorrow before I head back to New York and tell you all about it."_

_Luke's eyes narrowed to cold daggers, alternating between Rory and Logan, while Lorelai stood there thinking over Rory's words. "Sure," she replied uncertainly. "I'll see you at 11:00 for brunch at the Inn?" The look she was giving Rory left no room for doubt, she expected Rory and Rory alone tomorrow. _

"_I'll see you then."_

"_Enjoy your evening," Logan said as Luke and Lorelai walked away, towards their own table. "Are you about done?" he asked Rory._

_She could tell that he was suddenly tense. "Yes, I'm done."_

_Logan dropped cash on the table, apparently unable to wait for the server to bring a check over, and quickly made his way out of the restaurant, under the guise of bringing the car around for Rory. _

_Rory waited for him the car around, and slid into the passengers seat when it arrived. "Are you okay Logan?" she asked as they pulled away from the restaurant, as he still hadn't said anything. _

"_Fine."_

"_Okay." Rory let it go, even though she knew he was lying. He would tell her in his own time. _

_They returned to Logan's house, and Rory began to pop some popcorn for a movie and brew a pot of coffee. She got it all set out in the living room and went in search of Logan. She found him in his office, sitting at his desk. _

"_You ready to tell me what's bothering you?" she asked. _

"_I'm enjoying our time together," he said. _

"_I'm glad. Me too."_

"_I'm not ready for it to end."_

"_Who said anything about it ending?" she asked, suddenly nervous that he knew something she didn't._

"_Well, I know how much your mom's opinion means to you…" he trailed off looking down at his hands. "After last time…"_

"_Hold it right there," she stopped him before he could say anything else. He looked up at her. "This isn't the same as last time. You're the one that said it. We're different people now."_

"_Yeah we are, but are families still aren't. Your mom hates me."_

_Rory sighed. Logan wasn't completely wrong here, but telling him that he was right wouldn't help matters. "She doesn't really hate you. She doesn't even know you!"_

"_She may not know me, but she knows me well enough to know that she doesn't want me to be with her daughter."_

"_That may be, but she'll come around."_

"_I know how hard it was on you last time…"_

"_I don't think it'll come to that again, but I'm a lot stronger now. And in a better place in the rest of my life." She knew that stealing the yacht and dropping out of Yale had way more to do with her rift with her mother than Logan did, even though Lorelai bound all three of those items together. _

"_If you say so," Logan said hesitantly. _

"_I love my mom Logan. But I love you too." She walked around his desk and settled herself in his lap and kissed him. "It'll all work out, I promise."_

"_I'll hold you to that," he said. _

_Rory held her right hand up. "I, Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, solemnly swear that if I ever decide to part company with one Logan Elias Huntzberger, that it will have nothing to do with my mother." _

_Logan chuckled. "Okay Ace, since it's a solemn oath…"_

"_Good, can we go watch our movie now?"_

"_Yes ma'am."_

_The following morning, Rory packed up her overnight bag, kissed Logan goodbye and headed for Stars Hollow, with promises to call him after her brunch. _

_She arrived at the Dragonfly a few minutes early, and took the extra time to walk around the Inn and notice all of the subtle changes that had occurred throughout the years. There were now half a dozen horses in the stables. And the trees lining the driveway had grown taller. The fresh coat of paint kept the building looking good, but the weather had taken its toll on the wrap around porch, adding a hint of stately age to the building. Rory wound her way around the building and entered through the kitchen instead of facing Michel in the lobby. _

"_Hey Sweetie, you want some coffee?" Sookie called._

"_It's Rory," she said, not sure if Sookie knew who she was talking to. _

"_I know, I saw you coming up the path. Your mom's in her office."_

"_A cup of coffee would be great. Did she tell you about last night?" Rory asked as she took a seat on one of the stools across the island from where Sookie was prepping fruit. _

"_Yeah."_

"_How mad is she?"_

"_Sweetie, she's not mad as much as she's hurt."_

"_I didn't mean to."_

"_I'm sure she knows that."_

"_It's just, she hated Logan so much the first time. And then after the whole Jess thing… I just didn't want a lecture. Not over something hypothetical." She swirled her spoon in her coffee cup refusing to meet the chef's eyes. _

_Sookie reached across the counter and patted the back of Rory's hand. "Go talk to her. It'll make you both feel better."_

"_Thanks Sookie."_

_Rory picked up her coffee cup and headed into the dining room. She came in from the kitchen at the same time her mother came in from the other side. _

"_I see you've got your priorities straight. Coffee first." Lorelai gave her a wry smile. _

"_Hi Mom." _

"_So, what's going new?"_

_She shrugged. "Nothing."_

"_Rory," Lorelai's tone warned. "Why didn't you tell me about Logan?"_

"_First, you have to know that I wasn't keeping it from you to hurt you. We were keeping it from everyone."_

"_Why?"_

"_His family hates me. You hate him. And Grandma would be planning the wedding before we even finished our first date! We wanted to see if it would go anywhere first."_

_Lorelai chuckled at the apt classification of Emily's likely reaction. "I don't hate Logan."_

"_Yeah right. You were thrilled when I turned him at graduation." Rory's eyes narrowed, daring her mother to contradict her._

_Her mother sighed. "It wasn't because of Logan, it was because I didn't think you were ready to get married."_

"_You never did like Logan though."_

"_You're right. Logan is one of those spoiled society kids, just like the kind your dad and I grew up with. Hell, just like your dad and I used to be. I hated that life so much, that I ran away just so you wouldn't be part of it. I couldn't understand how you'd want to be part of it after all of the stories I told you. And honestly, given how you and Logan started, how could I ever like the guy that caused my beautiful, smart daughter to lie sobbing on our bathroom floor."_

"_That was a long time ago."_

"_Mothers don't just forgive and forget when it comes to those who hurt their children."_

"_You seem to have forgiven Jess. First for breaking my heart, then again for throwing our marriage away."_

_Lorelai snorted. "Is that what you think?"_

_Rory nodded. "I don't understand what makes Jess so different from Logan in that respect."_

"_I forgave Jess for breaking your heart, because you did. You wanted to marry him, and because I love you and want you to be happy, I supported you."_

"_Why didn't you do that with Logan?"_

"_Don't you think parents ever make mistakes? If I could go back and change it, I would have done more to show support for your decisions as far as Logan was concerned." Lorelai paused for a moment, then started again. _"_And so you know, I haven't forgiven Jess for breaking up your marriage. But I have to be civil because it's not fair to Luke otherwise. Luke may not agree with Jess's actions, but he's still family."_

_Rory sat there for a moment taking her mothers words in. _

"_What's the second reason?"_

"_Huh?" Rory looked up, confused at the question._

"_You started with a firstly, what's the secondly?"_

"_I didn't you to be disappointed in me."_

"_Oh Rory," Lorelai started. "I'm never disappointed in you. I might not agree with your choices, but you're an adult and you can make your own choices." _

_Rory glanced at her mother, to see her face filled with sadness. "I'm sorry Mom."_

"_No. I'm sorry. I may not like Logan, but I want you to be happy. If Logan makes you happy, then so be it. I just…"she trailed off._

"_You just what?"_

"_You were so hurt last time. I can't stand the thought of you being hurt that badly again. Especially by the same person."_

"_We're different people now."_

"_In some ways I suppose you are. But you will always be my daughter, and he will always be Logan Huntzberger. I just don't want your heart to be broken, or your dreams to be crushed, by any more Huntzbergers."_

"_I love you Mom."_

"_I love you too, Kid." _

Here she was… years later, heart broken and dreams crushed. But this time there wasn't a Huntzberger to blame. However, had she listened to her mother, she may have been able to avoid this. If this had happened with someone she didn't love as much as she loved Logan, maybe it would hurt less.

Rory stood up from the chair and returned to the bathroom to wash her face yet again. It was a good thing tear stains were easily removed.

When she left the bathroom she glanced at the clock, she'd been sitting in the chair wallowing for over an hour. Interesting, time flies when you're miserable too apparently.

"Paris!" she called as she entered the hallway. "Can we order dinner now?"

"Sure! What do you want?"

"Just get an assortment, and extra pot stickers!"

"Will do."

Rory stopped and turned around, returning to her room to grab some cash for the food, and saw her phone lit up on the end table. She'd turned it on silent after her mother called, even going as far to turn off the vibrations, so if she got a call or a text, the screen merely lit up.

She couldn't resist, and had to see who was calling or texting. She may not answer it, but for some reason she had to know.

It was a text from Logan. _Ace, I'm not sure what I've done or why you've left, but I hope you're okay. Please call me. Whatever it is, we can work through it, I promise. I love you. _

Rory ignored the message and went downstairs to find Paris. She knew she'd have to deal with Logan eventually, he wasn't the type to give up without knowing all the facts, but she couldn't deal with him yet.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: As usual, I don't own it. I know this chapter was really flashback heavy, so let me know if you like it, or if you don't. As far as reviews go, I'm okay with both rants and raves. <strong>

**Reviews will get a small bit of Chapter 6 as a reward! **

**Thanks for reading!**

**S**


	6. Chapter 6

Logan paced around their house, trying to figure out what to do next. He stared at his mobile, willing it to chime with an incoming text from Rory. He couldn't figure out what was wrong and it was making him crazy. He didn't know what to do.

Finally his pacing took him back to Rory's office. He needed a distraction. He picked up the book that held the strip of photos, and looked at them again. He and Rory were so happy then. They had a blank slate in front of them. "What did I do?" he asked the strip of paper.

He took the book and sank down in Rory's chair, after staring at the pictures for a few minutes, he returned them to their place, and opened the book to the beginning. **The Screw Up – by Jess Mariano ** Logan flipped the page and read the dedication, to his wife! He flipped back and looked for copyright information. Since it was a mock up, there wasn't any. He stood up from his chair and went over to Rory's bookshelves. He began to peruse the shelves, looking for the rest of Jess's works. He knew she had them all, regardless of the fact that he was her ex-husband, she still respected him as a writer. Having read The Subsect himself after he and Rory broke up, even he begrudgingly admitted that Jess had talent. Logan found her battered copy of The Subsect, along with a few other novellas, none of which were titled The Screw Up.

Logan returned to Rory's chair and began to read. After an hour or so, he closed the book. This was Jess's love letter to Rory. His grand apology for everything that went on between them. It was a fictionalized version of their lives, until the point where Rory left, and then it seemed to turn into the main character's path for redemption. He wasn't exactly sure how it ended, because he stopped reading. Was this why Rory left? Did she want to make another go of things with Jess now that he'd fully understood how his actions had hurt her? He stood up and let out a frustrated groan. What was he going to do? He kept the book with him, and headed to the kitchen. While he wasn't really hungry, he needed to eat something.

As he called and ordered take out, Chinese for delivery, he idly began flipping through the book, he turned to the bookmarker, and read those pages. Was that where she'd stopped reading? Or had she merely tucked the pictures into the book? He turned to the last page, to see how it ended. Of course it ended in death, he'd known that since the first sentence. He sighed, and returned to the place he left off, he had to finish reading this book. Maybe it would give him a clue as to what happened to Rory.

The Chinese food seemed to arrive within minutes, and Logan again set down The Screw Up to eat. As he slowly ate his Kung Pao Three In One and his chow mein he tried to figure out what to do in the immediate future. Did he go to work tomorrow and pretend nothing was wrong? Or did he call out sick? Or did he call his father and tell him what was really going on? As he tried to make up his mind as to a course of action, his thoughts drifted back to the last time…

_Five and a half years ago…_

_After Logan insisted that Emory leave, he laid in bed for hours staring at the ceiling trying to figure out what to do next. He finally ended up calling his office and leaving a message for his assistant that due to his flu, he'd be out for the rest of the week. After that, he got out of bed and headed to the living room. He grabbed a bottle of scotch from the liquor cabinet and took it to his favorite recliner. He spent the night watching old movies and drinking scotch, as he tried to sort out his feelings. He was feeling pain in his heart that he hadn't felt since Rory turned him down all those years before. But he couldn't figure out why. He knew that he didn't love Emory. He liked her well enough, but it wasn't anywhere near the same as that rush of being in love. As he separated out his thoughts, he finally realized that it was the loss of the children he wanted so badly that was causing him so much pain. For the last 18 months, every month he comforted Emory because they weren't pregnant, his heart had cracked a tiny bit. And now, to find out that it had all been a lie, it must have been the final blow, and his heart shattered into a million pieces. _

_He sat in his chair and stared at the screen, but he wasn't seeing what was actually on it. Instead of seeing Sam play it again, he was seeing visions of the future he'd always wanted. He could see himself pushing a little boy on a swing set, while a little girl came running up to him, encircling his leg with her arms "Daddy, push me next!" Logan shook his head vigorously to try and clear the sight, but he couldn't stop the tears that had formed in his eyes. As much as he blamed Emory for causing this by lying, he also blamed himself. Why couldn't he just love her? _

"_Damn it!" he said aloud. He set the scotch bottle down, turned off the TV and went back to bed. _

_The next morning he woke up, not sure if he felt better or worse. His flu symptoms felt better, but his hangover made him feel a lot worse. Determined to move forward as quickly as possible he pushed through the pain. He showered and dressed, and headed out to pick up moving boxes. He returned home with boxes, tape, markers, and breakfast. After a quick, greasy, breakfast to remedy the hangover, he began to assemble boxes. He started in their bedroom. He packed items into boxes labeled either Emory or Logan. The house had to go. He couldn't stomach the thought of living in the giant house he'd bought for his future family all alone, and he didn't want to pay for it while Emory lived there either. He would pack up the house, have movers move his stuff to a new place that he picked somewhere, and have them dump Emory's stuff wherever she wanted it. _

_It felt like he packed for weeks, but really it was only three days. He hadn't heard from Emory yet, but he also hadn't found a new place for himself, so he hadn't scheduled movers. _

_His office contacted him at least once an hour, and given the toll his emotional state had taken on him, the remnants of the flu, and the physical exhaustion of packing, he sounded bad enough that they only called for the first contact of the day, after that, he got text messages. _

_Finally, it was Saturday morning, the house was packed, except the bed Logan was sleeping in, his laptop, some clothes, and his toiletries. He needed to bite the bullet and tell his parents what was going on so he could find a new place. He'd never hear the end of it if his parents found out about his divorce from the Hartford Gossip Circle. Part of him had thought that Emory would go straight to his mother, but since Shira hadn't called him, he knew she didn't know. _

_Logan took a long hot shower, trying to wash away some of the heaviness of the week. Afterwards, he wrapped a towel around his waist and shaved the week's worth of stubble from his face. It would have been considered a beard had his hair been darker. He pulled on a pair of khakis and a sweater, and headed to the car. He drove to his parents place with a sense of doom that he hadn't felt since the first time he took Rory home for dinner as his girlfriend. _

_He found his parents in the kitchen eating breakfast when he arrived. _

"_Logan, what are you doing here?" his mother asked suspiciously. _

"_Are you feeling better?" his father asked, knowing about his absence from the office. _

_Instead of just blurting out his news, he made his way to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup of coffee. He settled in at the table across from his dad, and took a sip of his coffee. _

"_Logan, what's going on?" his mother asked impatiently. _

"_Emory and I are getting a divorce." He cut straight to the chase. _

"_Lets discuss this first," his father told him._

"_What did you do?" Shira asked. "You have to fix it."_

"_There's nothing to discuss Dad. We're getting a divorce."_

"_You just couldn't keep it in your pants could you?" Mitchum accused. _

_Logan scowled at his father. "That's your problem Dad, not mine."_

"_Logan!" Shira scolded. Mitchum just glared back at him._

"_How much is this going to cost?" Mitchum asked. _

"_Nothing." His father looked at him with surprise. Of course that's what he cared about, money. "I didn't cheat, we have no kids, and she worked before we got married. No alimony, no child support."_

"_Why?" his mother asked. _

"_I don't love her."_

"_So what?" both of his parents said at the same time. _

"_I want to have kids, and she doesn't want to have kids with someone who doesn't love her." He kept the blame for the divorce himself. While he didn't love Emory, he didn't want her to be publicly smeared by his family, and he knew if they knew about her deceit, that would be just what would happen. _

"_Why don't you just tell her that you love her?" his mother asked, as if there was nothing wrong with such a lie. _

"_There are some things you just don't lie about," he spat in disgust. "Anyhow, I just came to tell you this because I didn't want you to find out from someone else. I'm selling the house, and getting something new."_

"_But Logan," his mother started pleading, "how will this look?"_

"_I don't give a flying fuck how it looks." Anger was starting to take over. He quickly stood to leave before he made matters worse. _

"_Huntzbergers don't get divorced," his father told him, as though it would change anything. _

"_Well I guess I'm starting a new tradition. From now on Huntzbergers don't marry people that they don't love. Or at least this Huntzberger doesn't!" He gave his parents pointed looks. He knew his father had no love for his mother. She got pregnant and he got married, that was what happened and things like love and respect never even factored into the equation. _

"_I'll call Emory, I'm sure I can make her see reason," Shira told him. _

_Logan snorted audibly. Just what he needed, his mother teaching his wife how to trap a man. "No you won't," he replied firmly. "Look, I didn't come here to discuss this, I came here to tell you how it was. It's my life and it's not open for negotiation."_

_Shira began to cry. "What will everyone think?"_

_Mitchum began to lecture, "Logan, you know…"_

_And Logan turned and left the room. _

Looking back, that felt like heaven compared to now. His heart wasn't broken over Emory when they split, and while his parents were not at all supportive, they mostly left him alone about it. Mostly. Mitchum went back to treating Logan like a screw up, but he knew how to handle that. And Shira spent the next six months trying to repair his relationship with Emory. Luckily, while Emory had the society girl background that Shira loved, she also had enough self-preservation to stay away from society. She hightailed it back to California to go back to school and work on her M.R.S. degree… errr masters degree.

He wondered how his parents would react now. Would his mother rejoice in the fact that 'that girl' was no longer part of the family? Would his father start treating him like a screw up all over again? Or would they surprise him completely?

_Three years earlier_

_After they bumped into Luke and Lorelai in Hartford, Logan knew it was just a matter of time before everyone found out. And as much as he didn't care what his parents thought of the situation, he wouldn't let his family berate Rory again like they had so many years before. He needed to give them this information himself, along with some ground rules to go with it. _

_After Rory left to have brunch with her mother and head back to New York, Logan got on the phone and tracked down his parents, to find out when they'd be home. He wanted to tell them together, so he made sure they both knew the rules. _

_A week later, he finally got a chance. Oddly enough, it was another Saturday morning. And again, he found his parents eating breakfast in the kitchen. _

"_To what do we owe the honor this morning Logan?" Mitchum asked, as he buttered his toast. _

"_You're seeing someone aren't you?" his mother said gleefully. He knew full well she was pushing every society girl she could find in his direction. _

_The maid slid a cup of coffee in front of him, and he gratefully took a sip. "Yes I am." _

"_It's Marissa Roberts isn't it?" Shira asked. "I knew she'd be just your type."_

"_It's not Marissa Roberts."_

"_Is it Danita Grey then? She's such a lovely girl." Logan merely shook his head. "Is it…"_

"_Shira, why don't you just let Logan tell us, instead of trying to guess?" Mitchum cut her off before she could rattle off every name she knew. _

"_Is it at least someone from a good family?" _

_Before Logan could answer, his father spoke again. "Goddamn it Logan. That's why you're moving the office to New York isn't it?"_

"_I really think New York is the best place for the office, it'll be easier to have people come to me instead of traveling all the time," Logan told him. He hated that even after he'd proven himself time and time again, his father still second guessed everything he did, determined to find some nefarious ulterior motive._

"_I should have paid more attention to the rumors," Mitchum said with a sigh. _

"_What's going on?" Shira asked, unable to follow the conversation. _

_His dad opened his mouth to speak, but Logan beat him to it. "I'm seeing Rory Gilmore."_

"_Mitchum you knew about this?" Shira screamed. _

"_I knew she lived in New York, and that she and Logan had renewed their friendship. I didn't know it was more than that." He glared at Logan. _

"_Logan, how could you? After how she embarrassed us all those years ago…" Shira trailed off. _

"_How on earth did she embarrass you?" Logan snapped at her. "Rory was never anything but polite to you. Yes she turned down my proposal, but I'm the one who walked away."_

_Shira huffed at his statement, and opened her mouth to reply, but Logan kept talking. _

"_I'm here to tell you in person. I didn't want you to find out from someone else. Rory and I are seeing each other. Therefore, if you see her, you will be polite to her. You will be polite to the Gilmores. You will be polite to the Haydens."_

"_What do the Haydens have to do with anything?" Shira asked confused. _

"_Francine is Rory's grandmother. Christopher is Rory's father."_

"_I don't like being threatened Logan," Mitchum said. _

"_This isn't a threat. I don't know if Rory's 'the one' or not, but I want to be left alone to figure it out. No snide remarks, no setups, no pressure."_

"_And if we don't?" Mitchum asked. _

_Logan smiled. "If you don't, I'm out." Logan had saved every penny from the sale of his company in California, and despite Emory's penchant for spending, he managed to make that amount grow while they were married, and even more so since then. "I was successful before on my own," he reminded them. _

_His father continued to glare at him, and his mother looked lost in thought. He assumed that the knowledge that Rory was a Hayden changed her opinion of her. _

…

_When the time came a few months later, and they were all at the same event, Logan was pleasantly surprised. Shira remained polite, with no backhanded compliments, and Mitchum actually ate a little crow and told Rory how much he was enjoying her current series in the Times. Rory had changed too. She was no longer the girl who was desperate to please everyone; she'd grown into herself. She was confident and humble at the same time. While he wouldn't say his parents loved Rory the second time around, they were at least polite and not actively working to get rid of her. _

…

_All remained well, until Logan decided to propose. Again. This time, he did things completely differently. Instead of asking Lorelai (or Christopher), he and Rory discussed whether they saw themselves getting married again, and to each other even. Rory would not be blindsided with his proposal again. _

_The week he planned to propose, he was in Connecticut for meetings, and stopped by his parents house. He wanted to use his grandmother's ring. He wouldn't reuse the one from the first time, and frankly he couldn't if he wanted to. After she got engaged to Jess he gave the ring to Finn to return so he wouldn't be tempted to chuck it into the Pacific Ocean. Emory had been all bent out of shape that she didn't get the family ring, as Shira had been going on and on and on about it, since she and Logan started dating seriously, but Logan refused to give the ring to anybody he didn't love. When he was 25, he didn't want to give it to Rory, because he didn't want the tie to his family. But now, they had both accepted his family, and he wanted her to have the ring._

_He headed into his father's study, where he knew the ring was kept. It was in the wall safe, behind a lesser known Picasso that his father just loved. He was surprised to find his mother sitting at his father's desk, rifling through papers, looking for something. _

"_Hey Mom, what are you doing in here?" he asked. _

_She looked up startled. "Logan! What brings you out here today?"_

"_I came to get Grandmother Anne's ring."_

"_You're proposing? Again?"_

"_Yes I am. Thank you for the support," he spat sarcastically. _

"_Logan, Rory's a nice girl. I'll admit I should have given her a better chance the first time around, but she's still not Huntzberger wife material."_

"_Why not? Because she's not a gold digger who only wants to lay her hands on the Huntzberger fortune?" he suggested to his mother with a knowing look._

_Shira blushed at his insinuation. "No. It's not that. I know you think the only reason I married your father was for the money…" she started. _

"_I don't think, I know. I've seen the evidence," Logan interrupted coldly. _

_Shira sighed. "Huntzberger wives are meant to support the Huntzberger husbands and produce the Huntzberger heirs. I just don't think that Rory's up for the task. She has her own career. Does she even want kids?"_

"_Don't you think after what happened with Emory, I'd be sure to know the answer to that before I thought of proposing?" Logan asked in return. "Of course Rory wants kids," he added before she could answer his rhetorical question._

"_Well with both of you working, who's going to raise them?" _

"_We'll figure it out when the time comes. You didn't work, and yet Honor and I were still raised by nannies."_

_Shira flushed at Logan's slight on her parenting skills. _

_Logan continued on, "Rory's mom worked more than full time when Rory was little, and still managed to raise her on her own. I think Rory and I can manage to work and raise kids."_

_While his mother sat there awkwardly trying to come up with her next argument, Logan spun the dial on the safe to open it. Once it was open, he moved around several jewelry boxes, until he found the one he was looking for. He flipped it open to find the ring, exactly as he remembered it. It wasn't a huge ring, a three carat emerald cut diamond solitaire, but his grandfather had given it to his grandmother with love and that made it more valuable than anything money could buy, in his opinion. His grandparents had loved each other until his grandmother's death, and even after that, his grandfather hadn't moved on. He hoped that he and Rory would have that same long-lasting love. _

"_Just make sure it's in the prenup that you get the ring back if you two split up," Shira said in a snide tone. _

_Logan refused to be baited, and just stalked out of the room._

Maybe Logan should have listened to his mother. He shuddered at the thought. No, he just had to figure out what was going on with Rory, and until then he was going to go about his life as if nothing was wrong, and do everything in his power to find out what was wrong, and fix it.

He cleaned up the Chinese food, sticking the leftovers in the fridge, and took The Screw Up into his own office to finish reading it. He poured a tumbler of scotch, and settled himself into his favorite recliner, the only thing he'd kept in every place he'd lived, and picked up where he left off.

He finished the book a few hours later, and he finally saw some of what his wife saw in Jess Mariano. He really was an amazingly talented writer. If Logan was a bigger man, he'd call Jess and tell him exactly that, but instead, he settled for just admitting it to himself, which was hard enough as it was.

The book didn't give him any hints as to why Rory left. Based on the storyline, the Screw Up's continual run-ins with his beloved long after their divorce, he could tell that the book was written after Rory left Jess, but before she and Logan got together. It had to be something else.

He looked at his watch to see that it was after 10:00, and decided he should go to bed. Not that he'd likely sleep, but at least he could try. He returned the book, with the pictures in their rightful place, back to Rory's office, then headed to their bedroom. As he looked around the room he considered sleeping in the guest room, but decided against it. He walked into the bathroom and took the time to brush his teeth, then when he returned to the bedroom he stripped off his shirt and slacks, leaving them in a pile where he stood. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his socks, tossing them towards the pile of his clothes. He just didn't care about putting things away right now. He stood up and flipped the covers down on the bed, then clad only in his boxers, climbed in. He let himself drift to Rory's side of the bed, and rested his head on her pillow. The maid had come at some point during the day, but instead of changing the sheets she'd merely made the bed, so Rory's pillow still smelled like her shampoo. He hugged the pillow to him, then rolled back to his side of the bed, taking the pillow with him. He sat up against the headboard to check his emails before turning out the lights, to make sure he didn't have one from Rory. He didn't. He scrolled through the last few bits of correspondence between the two of them, looking for something upsetting or out of the ordinary, but found nothing.

Logan sighed and set his phone on the nightstand. He flicked off the lamp, and laid down on his side, hugging the Rory scented pillow to him. "I miss you Ace," he whispered to the pillow.

The tri-tone chime of his phone startled him and he reached back to grab it from the table. Rory!

_I love you too _was all that it said.

All hope was not lost. Logan gripped the phone in one hand, while he had the other wrapped around Rory's pillow, and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So sorry for the delay. Real life got in my way! So I hope you like Chapter 6, please read and review. <strong>

**As you know, I don't own anything. **

**I look forward to hearing from you.**

**Thanks for reading!**

**-S**


	7. Chapter 7

"Chinese food must have healing powers," Rory told Paris after she'd consumed her fourth pot sticker.

"You think so?" Paris asked with her mouth full of General Tso's chicken.

"Yeah. I think it's the MSG."

"You should totally do an expose on that."

Since Rory had come down from her room, Paris hadn't said a word about Logan, her fertility issues, or the future.

"I can see the headline now, 'Is MSG really bad for you or is it a powerful mood-altering drug?'" Rory snickered at the idea.

"Could you pass the Kung Pao Shrimp?" Paris asked.

Rory handed it over, and they went back to focusing on the food. "You remember that little Chinese joint in New Haven that used have the-"

"Mu Shu Pork!" both girls exclaimed together.

"Yeah," Paris commented, "best Mu Shu ever. I've been trying to find something comparable ever since."

"There are definitely things I miss about college."

"Oh yeah? Like what?" Paris asked.

"The built in breaks. A month off for Christmas, two months off for summer. Spring break."

"The experimentation."

"What on Earth did you experiment with in college Paris?"

"Asher Flemming! How could you forget?"

"I didn't forget, I just didn't think that was an experiment."

"Okay fine, if that doesn't count, what about kissing you in Florida!" Paris reminded her.

Rory smiled at the memory. "That wasn't the first time we kissed you know." Paris looked at her quizzically. "Have you forgotten our ill-fated Romeo and Juliet project?"

Paris laughed. "Things were so much easier then."

"Not that we saw it that way at the time."

"True dat." Paris held up her iced tea glass and inclined it towards Rory for a confirmation toast.

"True dat?" Rory repeated with a laugh clinking her glass with her friends. "Oh Paris, you crack me up. Thank you."

"Anytime Gilmore."

"I wonder whatever happened to Tristan DuGrey," Rory said, thinking back on why she and Paris kissed in the first place.

"He's an architect in Seattle."

"How do you know that?" Rory asked in surprise.

"Ran into his grandparents last time I was in Hartford."

"Ah."

"The original blond playboy… oh how things could have turned out," Paris teased.

"If that had worked out, you and I would not have become friends, and you know it!"

"You're right."

"Do you ever wish you could go back and do things differently?" Rory asked, suddenly serious.

Paris shrugged. "It's human nature."

"What would you change?"

"I would have tried to focus more on my marriage less on my work."

"Do you wish you and Doyle were still together?"

The blonde shrugged again. "Sometimes. Sometimes I think about how he drove me crazy, and I'm glad that I'm not dealing with that anymore, but other times, I think about how much fun it was to have a partner in things, and I really miss that."

Rory took in Paris's statement. "Do you think you'll ever get married again?"

"Maybe. When I'm older, and more established in my career. I'm too driven to focus on more than one thing at a time, and I think that once I get that to where I want it to be, I can work on the other stuff," she explained. "What about you, what would you do different?"

"I think maybe I would have left Jess earlier," Rory said quietly. "When I found out he didn't want to have kids at all."

"But you said yourself you weren't sure if you wanted kids then either."

"Sometimes there are things you tell yourself just to make a situation seem okay."

"Is that your way of admitting you were just lying to yourself back then?" Paris asked to clarify.

Rory nodded hesitantly. "Maybe. If I would have left Jess earlier, maybe I would have found out about this," she gestured to her midsection, "in time to fix it or something."

"Rory, you don't know enough about it to know whether it could have been fixed," Paris reminded her. "And then maybe you wouldn't have reconnected with Logan. Do you wish you'd never reconnected with him?" Paris's voice was surprisingly soft and quiet, almost like it was inside of Rory's head instead of coming from across the table.

Rory shook her head vehemently. "I can't imagine life without Logan, I'm glad I had him, even if it was only for a little while."

"You still have him."

"Not for long. Once he finds out…"

"I don't think you're giving Logan enough credit here Rory."

Rory glared at Paris. "Please, don't defend him right now."

"I'm not. I just think you're-"

Rory cut her off, "If you say 'overreacting' Geller, I'm going to smack you."

"I wasn't going to say overreacting, I was going to say I think you're jumping the gun. You're crediting Logan with reactions he hasn't had yet, and that's not like you."

"You're probably right," she replied bitterly. "Can we take this in the living room and watch a movie?"

"Nice subject change," Paris noted, "but sure, whatever you want. It's your crisis."

They moved themselves and the Chinese food into the living room, and Paris dug out her old copy a movie they'd watched together many times in college.

"I can't believe you still have a VCR."

"It's not the same on DVD," Paris replied. "Plus, I'm feeing nostalgic for spring break."

"Please don't tell me you want to kiss again!"

Paris snorted in response. "In your dreams Gilmore."

They watched the movie they both knew by heart as they consumed the remainder of the Chinese food. When the end credits rolled, Rory got up and started collecting empty take out containers. "I think I'm going to head up to bed."

"Just leave the containers, I'll take care of it. You just go on up to bed."

"Thanks Paris." She hugged her friend tightly.

"Anytime."

Rory returned to her room, changed into her pjs and flopped onto the bed. She picked up her phone, and noticed that she had no missed calls or texts, besides the earlier one from Logan. Maybe he was getting the picture and giving up. Just the thought of that made her heart spasm in pain. No. Logan did not give up. He was probably just giving her time.

She flipped open the phone and sent him a text in return. _I love you too_

Then she set the phone on the nightstand and tried to sleep. Sleep would not come easily, so instead she thought about what Paris had said, about her pushing reactions on to Logan. It was possible, but she didn't really think she was doing that. She'd heard about the end of Emory, and she knew how he felt about kids.

_Three years earlier_

_Around the time they were caught by her mom and Luke, and Logan broke the news to Mitchum and Shira, Rory and Logan started having conversations about the future. Between their old joint baggage, and their individual ex-spouse baggage, there was no way either one of them would make any assumptions about marriage and happily ever after. _

_It was Friday night, after dinner at the elder Gilmores house, where Emily had again brought up marriage and great grandkids, that Logan finally took the plunge to start the awkward conversation. They'd just gotten back to Logan's house in Connecticut, the one they kept for weekends and holidays, and Rory was making coffee in the kitchen to prepare for a Friday night movie. _

"_Can I talk to you for a minute?" Logan asked seriously._

"_Sure. Is everything okay?" Rory asked in return, She was nervously anticipating the day that her family finally pushed Logan too far. _

_She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across the table from Logan. _

"_Everything's fine I think. I just, well, I want to make sure we're on the same page, after last time…"he trailed off. _

_She nodded for him to continue. _

"_You know that Emory and I got divorced because she didn't want to have kids," he started, and she nodded again in acknowledgement. "But what you don't know, is why she didn't want to have kids, and how I found out."_

"_Oh Logan," she said sympathetically, she reached out to take his hand, but he waved her off. _

"_It's been years and I'm basically over it, but I feel like you need to know, because I never intend to let it happen again."_

_She stared at him waiting for him to continue. _

"_I wanted to have kids. I thought she wanted to have kids. We tried for a year and a half with no luck. Each month she seemed distraught when she didn't get pregnant and I comforted her. But one day, I was home sick with the flu and answered a call for her while she was out. It turned out she was secretly on birth control the whole time. She lied to me for a year and half, and when I confronted her, she told me she refused to have kids with someone who didn't love her. That was the end right there."_

"_Oh Logan," Rory repeated, tears forming in her eyes as she felt his pain. "I'd nev-"_

_He cut her off, needing to finish his tale. "I never loved her. I tried, but I never did. I do, however, love you. So I guess before we go any further, before I fall deeper into love with you, I need to know that you're on the same page, and that you want to have kids, with me."_

_The tears slid down her cheeks. "I love you too Logan. I want to have kids, and I want to have them with you. Not right this second of course, I'd like to be married and such, but I definitely want to have kids."_

_Logan smiled and suddenly looked much younger and more carefree. Rory wondered how much of a toll this had taken on him over the years. "I'm glad."_

She'd promised him kids, and now she couldn't deliver. It just wasn't fair! Why did this have to happen to her? Rory sat up in bed and punched her pillow a few times for good measure. She flopped back down and decided to try to count sheep to find her way to sleep.

* * *

><p>Rory spent the next three days with Paris. Aside from calling Art to tell him she would be out of the office for a bit, she didn't deal with her life at all. She watched movie after movie, and ate copious amounts of junk food in search of comfort. Paris went to work as usual, and came home at night to sit next to Rory on the couch and watch whatever movie Rory had chosen at the moment.<p>

Logan stopped calling after the first day. Every night, he texted the same message though, _I miss you. I love you. Please come home and talk to me. _And every night, Rory texted him back _I love you too._

It was on the fourth night of Rory's visit that Paris finally said something. They were in the middle of watching St. Elmo's Fire when Paris reached out and grabbed the remote to pause the movie.

"What are you doing? Do you need more ice cream?" Rory asked, as she gestured to the empty cartons on the coffee table.

"I want to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk."

"Rory, you're starting to worry me," Paris admitted quietly. "I know you need to process this in your own way, but this doesn't seem like the Rory I know."

"Oh really? Well what would the Rory _you_ know do?" Rory asked sarcastically.

"The Rory I know is a fighter. She wouldn't just sit by and let the man she loves leave her. She wouldn't just accept what the doctor told her without doing more research and getting second opinions. She wouldn't just give up!"

Rory glared at Paris. Stupid insightful best friend! "What if it's too hard?"

Paris raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't say anything, encouraging her to continue.

"What if Logan wants to leave me? What if there's nothing to be done about my condition? I don't think I could take it."

"So you're, what, just running away? If you leave Logan then it won't hurt as much? If you don't get a second opinion then there's always a little hope?" Rory nodded, embarrassed at herself. "It doesn't work that way," Paris told her gently. "If you don't fight, you're going to regret it."

Rory shrugged in response, and reached for the remote control to unpause the movie.

"If you don't get yourself together and tell Logan what's going on, I'll do it for you. I have a feeling you won't like the results if I do," Paris said quietly.

"Are you threatening me?" Rory asked, loudly.

"If that's the way you want to look at it."

"You wouldn't!"

"Wanna try me?"

Rory sighed in defeat. "How much time do I have?"

"Until Thursday. Then it'll have been a week."

Rory nodded in acceptance. "Well I guess I better go pack."

"What? Why? I'm not kicking you out!" Paris told her, suddenly concerned she may have done more harm than good. She only meant to give her friend a nudge into gear.

"I need to go to Stars Hollow. I promised my mom. And for some reason, there's something about going home that makes impossible things seem possible."

"I blame Scarlett O'Hara," Paris said, and Rory gave her a small smile in return. "We're okay, right?"

Rory nodded. "I came to you for the hard truths Paris."

"Glad I didn't disappoint."

"You never do."

"Do you want to finish watching the movie?"

"I should probably get packing," Rory said, making no move to get up.

"All right, I'll help," Paris said, also making no move to get up.

"There's only 20 minutes left of the movie… So we might as well watch it."

"Just can't leave in the middle can you?"

"Shut up Paris."

* * *

><p>When the movie was over, Rory went upstairs to pack her things. Paris followed her and stood at the doorway while she packed.<p>

"You're sure you've got everything?" Paris asked as they reached the front door.

"It's not like I'll never be back," Rory reminded her.

"Still. I'd hate for you to forget something important."

"I've got everything."

"You'll call if you need anything?" Paris's voice was laced with concern.

"Paris, when did you turn into my mother?" Rory asked. "Of course I'll call if I need anything. I'll probably call you regardless of whether I need anything."

Rory set her bag down to hug her best friend goodbye.

"Call me when you get there," Paris whispered in her ear.

Rory sighed. "Yes Mom," she admitted defeat.

* * *

><p>Rory left Boston around 8:00, knowing it would take her about three hours to reach Stars Hollow. She plugged in her iPod and cranked up the music a little too loud. Anything to drown out her own thoughts.<p>

* * *

><p>She reached Stars Hollow around 11:00 and went straight to Luke's. She knew the diner would be closed, but she had her key, and intended to stay at the apartment above it. She parked around the corner from the diner, and hauled her bag in through the front door. She should probably let her mother know she was here, but figured it could wait until morning.<p>

Her bag thumped as she pulled it up each stair. The apartment was unlocked as she expected, and as she flicked the light on inside, she noticed that it looked the same as ever.

When Luke and Lorelai had finally gotten married, they considered renting out the apartment. But neither of them could pull the trigger on finding tenants. Instead, it was kept as Luke's office, and often used as a neutral corner to retreat to during a fight. It also made for convenient guest housing for Rory and Jess when they came to visit. When she was in college, Rory never had a problem taking Logan home to visit, but for some reason, probably since Luke and Lorelai were both there, staying at the Crap Shack with them when she and Jess were married was just awkward. They could have stayed at the Dragonfly, but by staying at the apartment, they weren't taking up a room that could be filled with a paying guest. (Lorelai would never let them pay for a room at the inn!)

Rory set her suitcase just inside the door, and looked around. She could almost see the ghosts of her past swirling around the room. She could see her sixteen-year-old self on the couch making out with Jess. She could see herself at 25, pacing around in Jess's Clash tee-shirt waiting for him to come back upstairs with coffee. She glanced over at the big bed, and shuddered. She hadn't been in this apartment since before her divorce, and there were just too many memories over there.

She went over to the twin bed that had been April's when she was a teenager, and flopped down on it. It was much smaller than she was used to, but it would have to do. She pulled her mobile out of her pocket and saw that she'd missed Logan's nightly message. She texted him back, and went to change her clothes.

It wasn't long after that when her phone rang, or vibrated as the case was, since she'd left it on silent.

"I just got here Paris, I was going to call you, I swear!" she said in lieu of greeting, answering the phone without looking at the caller ID.

"It's not Paris."

"Oh. Sorry Mom."

"So I'm assuming by 'here' you mean Stars Hollow?"

"How'd you know?"

"Rory, how soon you forget. This is Stars Hollow. We got a phone call as soon as the light in that apartment flicked on."

Rory smiled. "Oh yeah."

"So why didn't you tell me you were coming? And why aren't you staying here with me?" her mother asked, again sounding hurt.

"It was a spur of the moment decision, and I didn't want to show up at your house really late and wake up Will and Ella."

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Rory thought over what she'd said and realized she'd used the wrong word.

"I'm sorry. I'll come over now if you want, since I know you're up," she added.

"That's okay Kid. You can stay at Luke's and I'll just see you for breakfast tomorrow after I drop the kids at school."

"Thanks Mom. And, I'm sorry," Rory added for good measure.

"Get some sleep Ror. We'll talk in the morning. Love you."

"Love you too." Rory sighed as she disconnected the call, and replayed the conversation with her mother, wondering just when things had changed to become this way. She texted Paris to let her know she was safe and sound in Stars Hollow, then climbed into bed.

She'd called the Crap Shack 'your house'. For the first time she could remember, she didn't think of it as home. The entire time she was married to Jess, she still thought of her mother's house as home, and referred to it as such. Even hours earlier, she told Paris she was going home, and meant Stars Hollow. But now, being here, it was comfortable and familiar, like home, but somehow, without Logan, it just wasn't home anymore. Maybe the old adage 'home is where the heart is' really was true.

* * *

><p>Monday morning found Rory rousted out of bed earlier than she'd anticipated by the smell of Luke's coffee, wafting up from below. She pulled on a pair of faded Yale sweats and a hoodie, and shuffled down the stairs, hoping to get coffee without having to venture into the diner. "Psst!" she hissed loudly when she reached the bottom of the stairs. "Luke, over here!" she added in a stage whisper.<p>

Luke looked up from where he stood slicing fruit. "Hey Rory. I'm sorry, did I wake you up?" He set down his knife and moved towards her to hug her hello.

"You didn't. Your delicious smelling java did. Can I get a cup?"

"Of course, of course," he said as he hurried to get her coffee, surprisingly unaccompanied by the usual lecture about the dangers of caffeine.

She took a sip and sighed. "Oh how I've missed you." Luke smiled at her. "I've missed you too Luke," she added.

Luke made a gruff sound of acknowledgement. "Are you going to head back up stairs?"

"Unless you need some help," she offered.

"Nah, I'm good. Go on back to bed. I'll send your mother up when she gets here."

"Thanks Luke!" She leaned in and kissed his cheek. "You're the best."

* * *

><p>She was curled up in bed with her coffee and her laptop, researching treatment options for her condition, when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She quickly shut the lid on her laptop and picked up the book on the nightstand to focus her attentions on. "You're here early," she said without looking up from the book when the door opened.<p>

"Rory? What are you doing here?"

She dropped her book at the sound of his voice, jerked her head up to confirm with her eyes what her ears already knew. "Jess? What are you doing here? And better yet, why didn't Luke warn me?"

Jess dropped his bag and kicked the door shut. "Luke didn't know I was coming, and I didn't see him on my way up here this morning."

"Why are you here?" Rory asked.

"Why are you here? Don't you have your own house in the country nearby?" Jess asked snidely in return.

"I asked first."

"Technically, I asked first," he reminded her. Rory sighed and just stared at him instead of answering. "Did you and the King of the Douchebags have a fight?" he suggested. "Couldn't decide on whether the new vacation home should be on the French Rivera or the Amalfi Coast, huh?"

"Fuck you Jess."

"Come on Ror, what did Captain Douche do now?" He was trying to cajole a response from her.

"Back off Jess."

Instead of backing off, he moved closer, so he was sitting on the foot of the bed she was occupying. "Did he buy you the BMW when you really wanted the Mercedes?"

She snorted at his suggestion.

"He bought you sapphires instead of diamonds, didn't he?"

Rory merely shook her head as his guesses got more and more outrageous. "What are you doing here Jess?" she asked again after about half a dozen more stabs in the dark.

"I come up here to work once and while," he admitted. "Really Rory, what are you doing here?"

She shrugged in response, not yet willing to answer.

"I know something's wrong. What did Logan do this time?" Jess's voice took on a serious tone.

"Why does everyone assume Logan did something?" Rory asked, exasperated.

"If he didn't do something wrong, you'd be staying at your own house, not here."

"I'm visiting my mom!" Rory told him.

"Then why aren't you staying at the Crap Shack?" It was no use really. Jess knew her too well, and could see straight through all of her bullshit.

"It's me here Rory. What'd Logan do?" Jess paused to give her a moment to answer, and when she didn't he went back to making up ridiculous reasons for her to be mad at him. "I know! He wants to name your first born after his father!"

Rory's head snapped up from the book she was trying to read in hopes of ignoring Jess, and tears instantly filled her eyes and began running down her face. "Shut. Up. Jess."

"Woah, woah. I wasn't serious Rory. Oh my God. Is that really it? He wants to name your kids after his dad!" Jess got serious quickly.

Rory shook her head no. "I'd be happy to name my kids after Mitchum, if only we could HAVE KIDS!" her voice escalated towards the end of her sentence.

Rory watched as Jess opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. "What, cat got your tongue Mariano?" she spat. "No pithy remarks?" He merely stared at her with his mouth open. "Surely literary genius Jess Mariano can think of something to say."

Jess scooted closer to her on the bed, and pulled her into his arms. "I'm sorry Rory," he whispered, then he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. As he held her, her anger dissipated, and she broke down in sobs. "Please don't cry. I hated it when we were married, and I hate it even more now."

Rory half laughed and half sobbed as she pushed herself away from Jess. He grabbed the corner of the sheet for her to use to wipe her face. "Thanks," she mumbled.

"Poor Rory," he started sympathetically. "First you're married to me and find out that I've gone and, uh, permanently blocked the Chamber of Secrets," Rory snorted at his poorly executed Harry Potter joke, which she knew was an attempt to lighten the mood, "then, I'm assuming that he didn't do the same thing," she shook her head no. "Then you find out that Huntzberger's shooting blanks. You just can't catch a break can you?"

"It's NOT Logan!" Rory said emphatically.

"Oh Rory." Jess moved closer to hug her again as the tears started flowing again.

Rory continued to cry, as Jess situated himself in a better position. She clung to him, as he moved to sit directly beside her, and leaned back allowing her continue to hug him.

"Shhhh," he hushed. "I'm sorry." He stroked her hair away from her face, and made what he thought were soothing sounds.

"What's wrong with me?" Rory rasped out between sobs. "Why can't I make anybody happy?" Jess continued to lightly rub her back, but didn't say a word. "I was gone too much to make you happy when we were married, so I gave up traveling so much when Logan and I got married, and now, all he wants is to have kids, and I can't give him that either!"

Jess moved to push Rory from him at arms length. "You made me very happy when we were married. Much happier than anyone before or since, I might add. I'm the one that screwed up our marriage, NOT you."

"I was gone all the time Jess, I understand how that made things _difficult_," she told him. "Really. It's not entirely your fault."

"Rory, I-" She cut him off again.

"I was primarily concerned with my career and what I wanted."

"I still shouldn't have cheated."

"Yea, well, that's a given." She smiled a tiny smile.

"Did you give up traveling to make sure Logan didn't cheat?" Jess asked seriously.

"Why does everyone think Logan would cheat on me?"

"Uhm, history does have a tendency to repeat itself."

"That was over a decade ago, and he thought we were broken up!" Jess rolled his eyes at her. "Fine. But no, that's not why I gave it up. I was tired of living out of a suitcase, and rarely seeing my family. Logan and I wanted to start our own family, and there's no way I would want to be pregnant in a war zone. It's one thing to risk my own life, but another to risk that of a child who had no choice in the matter," she explained.

"That makes sense," Jess said.

"I guess it doesn't really matter now," Rory said as the tears started again.

Jess pulled her close again, "Seriously, how do you have more tears?" She elbowed him in the ribs lightly and laughed in spite of herself. "I mean, you never cried this much when we were married. If you really want to make your marriage work, maybe I could give Logan some lessons on how to make you laugh." The teasing made her feel a little more normal.

"Give it a rest Jess."

"But really, tell me, how's Logan taking the news?"

"I haven't told him yet," she whispered.

"What?" Jess practically shouted. "So why does he think you suddenly wanted to come home and visit?"

"He doesn't know where I am," she admitted guiltily.

"Wow, I never thought you had it in you to be so cold," Jess said dryly.

"Yeah, well I never thought I'd see the day where you'd be defending Logan."

"Oh my God!" Jess started patting himself down, starting with his face. "What's wrong with me?" This got a laugh out of Rory. "You need to tell him you know," he said softly.

"I know," she told him. "I just need to get a handle on it myself first. I finally started researching this morning," she admitted.

"That's my girl." Jess squeezed her shoulder. "What'd you find?"

She grabbed her laptop, and the two of them started researching together, side by side in the little twin bed, with Jess's arm around Rory's shoulder.

They were so wrapped up in the research, that neither of them heard the footsteps on the stairs or the door to the apartment open.

"Well, well, well, what a cozy scene we have here. This isn't what I expected to find at all!"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Here's chapter 7 for you. Sorry it's taken so long, I hope I still have some readers out there. <strong>

**Please read and review. I don't own anything as usual!**

**Thanks for reading!**

**S**


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Okay, I'm switching it up a bit. I know this is supposed to be a Logan POV chapter… but given how I left the last chapter, I thought I'd leave it with Rory for a bit longer. **

_Last time on Dyslexic Heart: "Well, well, well, what a cozy scene we have here. This isn't what I expected to find at all!"_

"Mom!" Rory said quickly, as she shut her laptop and slid out of bed. "It's not what you think!"

"Hey Lorelai," Jess added cooly.

"Is this why you left Logan?" Lorelai asked.

"No!" Rory yelled.

"I'm gonna head downstairs and find Luke," Jess said to Rory as he slid off the bed. He made a dash for the door trying, and failing, to avoid getting death glares from Lorelai.

Lorelai stood with her hands on her hips, staring at Rory as she came towards her. "What's going on Rory?"

"I-" Her mother cut her off before she could start.

"First I find out from Logan that you've left him. From Logan! Not from you! Then I find out that you're staying with Paris. And then, when you do finally come home, you stay here, with Jess, instead of coming home. Jess? Rory, really? You're gonna travel that road again?"

"NO!" Rory screamed. Her mother looked startled by her scream. "I'm not with Jess again! He showed up here this morning, about an hour before you did! I thought he was you when I heard the door open. There's nothing going on other than that!"

"You looked pretty comfy together," Lorelai said dubiously.

"Yes, because everything is always exactly how it seems," Rory shot back sarcastically.

"Look Kid," Lorelai started, "I know-"

"Just because you always go running back to Dad when your relationships get a bit sticky doesn't mean I'm the same way!"

Lorelai looked as though Rory had slapped her. "Rory, you don't know what you're talking about."

She snorted. "Yeah, I think I do. 'I'm gonna marry Max, no wait, I want Christopher. I'm gonna marry Luke, no wait, I want Christopher. I'm gonna marry Christopher…'"

"Rory!" Lorelai snapped. Rory stopped talking and stared at her mother. "I don't know what's gotten into you, but whatever it is, it doesn't give you the right to talk to me like that."

"Oh yeah, that's right. You get to be all judgmental about my life, but I can't say a word about yours." Rory raked her hands through her hair, pulling it away from her face.

"Seriously, I don't know what's going on with you, but I'm not going to put up with your mood for much longer." Lorelai stared her down, and began to impatiently tap her foot, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement.

"I'm sorry Mom. I'm having a rough time right now," Rory said apologetically.

Lorelai gingerly put her arm around her daughter's shoulder and led her to the couch. "Wanna tell me about it?"

Rory nodded. "First, nothing happened with Jess. He was helping me do some research."

"Okay," Lorelai replied hesitantly.

"Whether you believe it or not, it's the truth."

"I believe you."

"Good."

"So, what's going on? Why did you leave Logan?" Lorelai asked gently.

Rory was grateful that for once, the blame wasn't immediately cast onto Logan. She stared down at her hands, for a moment, letting her gaze linger on her wedding ring. "He wants to have kids."

"I thought you did too," Lorelai said, confused.

"I do."

"Then what's the problem?"

"I," Rory started, but broke down in tears again. "Ugh. I'm sorry. I can't seem to hold myself together right now."

"Rory, honey, what's wrong?" her mother asked, completely filled with concern, the argument from only moments before completely forgotten.

"I can't have kids," she whispered.

"Oh Baby," Lorelai exhaled as she pulled her eldest daughter into her arms and began crying right along with her.

The two of them sat on the couch, hugging, rocking, and crying, until Rory seemed to run out of tears.

Lorelai finally spoke as she wiped away her own tears. "Honey, I get why you're upset about this, but why are you leaving Logan? Did he say something to make you think…" she trailed off not knowing how to finish the sentence.

Rory shook her head. "Logan doesn't know."

"Rory!"

"He wants to have kids Mom. That's why he divorced his first wife. It's only a matter of time before he divorces me too. I'm hoping it'll be easier if I give him permission and get a head start on moving on."

"Aren't there other ways you could have kids? Adoption? A surrogate?"

She shook her head sadly. "The Huntzbergers would never accept an adopted child as the heir to the empire. And I couldn't stand to see another woman pregnant with my husband's child," Rory admitted.

"A surrogate isn't a polite way to say your husband knocked someone else up you know."

"I know," Rory replied with a small chuckle. "Even if it's half my DNA I still don't think I'd be okay with it."

"And you're sure you can't get pregnant?" Lorelai asked.

"That's what the doctor said."

"What did the other doctors say?"

Rory shrugged in response.

Lorelai's head shot up in surprise. "Kid, you haven't seen a dozen other doctors to confirm what the first one said?"

"Well, no," she mumbled.

"We're going to change that." Lorelai stood up and started pacing. "Did Paris give you some referrals?"

"Probably."

"Look, I know I'm not the best parental example. As you so eagerly pointed out earlier, I have a tendency to run away from my problems and just hope they go away on their own, but I don't want you to be that way." Lorelai's hands flailed as she spoke.

"I _am_ sorry about what I said earlier," Rory said as she stared down at her hands, picking at her thumbnail. "You're right. I shouldn't speak to you like that. I know the decisions you've made weren't easy ones. I'm not you, I shouldn't judge."

"You know, I still think of you as my little girl. I still see you at Ella's age, and I feel like it's my job as a parent to tell you when I think you're screwing up and I'm sorry. You're a grown up. I shouldn't judge you either. Now I'm not saying that I'll completely butt out and not give you advice, but I'll try harder to not sound judgmental when I do it." Her mother paused mid pace, right in front of her, and reached out to tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

Rory smiled at the gesture and leaned into her mother's hand. "Thanks Mom."

There was a knock at the door, followed by Luke sticking his head in. "Is everything all right up here? I heard shouting."

"We're fine Babe, but thanks for checking," Lorelai reassured him.

"Okay then." He turned to leave but Lorelai stopped him.

"Wait! Do you think we could get more coffee up here?"

Luke begrudgingly sighed. "I'll send Jess up with more. If he's allowed to come back upstairs that is."

Rory and Lorelai exchanged looks, a silent battle of wills. "It's fine," Lorelai conceded.

Luke pulled the door shut, and Lorelai returned her attention to her daughter. "Really? You want Jess up here?"

"He offers a different perspective," Rory told her with a noncommittal shrug.

"You know the only other perspective that really matters is Logan's right?"

"Of course I do!" Rory replied. "I just…"

Lorelai put a hand on her daughter's shoulder, "You don't have to have all the answers you know? That's part of being married. Working things out together."

The thought of working things out with Logan left Rory with mixed feelings. Part of her wanted to sit side by side with him and do the research, have him there to hold her hand at the doctor's appointments, and figure out a solution together. The other part of her was still afraid he'd stay out of obligation. "I don't want to be Logan's burden," she whispered.

Lorelai scoffed at her daughter's statement, and Rory jerked her head up in response to look at her mother. How dare she laugh? "You listen to me Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, you are nobody's burden!" her mother told her confidently.

"Yeah, until Logan feels like he has to stay with me," Rory said glumly.

"That's a load of crap," Jess said from the doorway. He came in with a tray full of coffee cups and a thermos full of refills. Rory and Lorelai both looked at him. "Look, you know that there's no love loss between me and Captain Douchebag," Rory glared at him, and Lorelai snickered at the moniker, earning her a glare from Rory as well, "but Rory honestly, Logan loves you. If you were stuck in bed and he had to spoon feed you tapioca for the rest of your life he'd be happy to do it."

"I hate tapioca."

"Fine, chocolate pudding then, but that's not my point. My point is that I don't think there'd be anything you could do to make Logan see you as a burden. Would you find him a burden if the situation was reversed?"

"Ohhhh, good question," Lorelai said, switching her focus from Jess to Rory, as if she were on a game show.

"If Logan were the one that couldn't have kids?" Rory clarified. Jess nodded, and Rory thought about it for a moment. "It's not the same. We'd adopt and everything would be just fine."

"How is that different?" Jess asked.

"Because then Logan's the one not creating Huntzberger heirs," Lorelai answered quietly. "This isn't really about Logan is it? It's about Mitchum and Shira."

"Oh God Rory! Say it ain't so!" Jess exclaimed. "You really care about what those pretentious assholes think?"

"I hadn't," Rory paused mid sentence, hanging her head with shame and resting it in her hands, "I didn't realize."

Lorelai came and sat down next to Rory again. "Oh Rory."

"Why do you care Rory?" Jess asked again. "What happened to the girl I knew who didn't give a crap about what the great Mitchum Huntzberger thought?"

Rory's shoulders heaved up and down as she cried. "She fell in love with someone who cares an awful lot about what Mitchum Huntzberger thinks."

Jess set the coffee down on the coffee table and sat down on the other side of Rory. "Well, there went the little respect I did have for Huntzberger. Hims cares abouts what his daddy finks! Isn't that precious?" Jess's attempt at baby talk made Lorelai laugh, but it did not have the same affect on Rory.

She shot him a look of pure hatred. "Jess, don't go there," she warned.

"Poor Logan, just wants his daddy's approval," Jess just kept at it.

Rory lost it. "Oh poor Jess. He barely knew his dad, who lived 2000 miles away and just didn't give a shit about him." Jess gave her a dirty look and Lorelai's jaw dropped at Rory's comment. "I bet Logan would trade with you in a heart beat. Instead of having a dad he could just forget about because he didn't know him, and he wasn't around, he had to grow up with a dad that no matter what he did, it wasn't good enough. Even when he was out on his own, he was still living with the Huntzberger stigma! Honestly, given the pressure, he turned out remarkably well."

"Yeah, poor Logan he had it sooooo rough," Jess spat. "He had his rich daddy to fund everything and bail him out when things got sticky."

"You have no idea how much that cost," Rory defended.

"Rory, I lived that life," her mother reminded her.

Rory whirled around to face Lorelai. "No offense Mom, but you didn't. Grandma and Grandpa may have been on your case about everything, and you may have hated it, but you can have absolutely no doubt that they loved you. You never had to earn that."

Lorelai opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again.

"So you're just afraid Logan will pick making his parents happy over you?" Jess asked.

"No! I know without a shadow of a doubt that Logan would pick me over his parents," she said confidently, knowing without ever discussing it with Logan, that it was the absolute truth. "But here's the kicker, I don't want him to have to make that choice!"

Lorelai put her hand on Rory's arm. "You know that it's not your job to protect Logan's relationship with his parents."

"I know Mom. I don't want to make it worse for him though." Tears streamed down her face. Her mother rubbed her back softly, as Jess's stony gaze was focused on the door. Rory reached out and put her hand on Jess's knee. She knew exactly how Jess felt about his dad, and she knew exactly how much her statement would wound him. "I'm sorry Jess," she whispered. "I didn't mean what I said."

Jess's hand covered her own. "I suppose I'll forgive you just this one time."

"Thanks," she said with a wan smile.

"But I get… three free shots on Huntzberger," he added, hoping to lighten her mood a tiny bit.

"As long as he's not around," Rory amended.

"Deal." He stuck out his hand to shake hers.

The three of them sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds to be heard were the sipping of coffee and the clatter of the diner below.

Finally Lorelai broke the silence. "Logan needs to know what's going on."

Rory sighed. "I know. I promised Paris I would talk to him by Thursday at the latest."

"Or?" Jess asked curiously.

Lorelai chuckled. "He didn't spend much time with Paris when you two were together did he?"

Rory shook her head solemnly. "She was busy with med school… and Boston is pretty far from Philly," she informed her mother, then turned her attentions to Jess. "If I don't do it, Paris'll do it for me. Then, she'll probably kick my ass for making her do it."

Jess smiled in response, and since Rory figured he was imagining some girl-on-girl action, she gave him a sharp jab to the ribs with her elbow. "Hey! A guy can dream!" he exclaimed, confirming her suspicions.

"So, are you going to stay here until Thursday?" Lorelai asked.

"Here the apartment or here Stars Hollow?" Rory asked in return, trying to clarify the situation.

"Both!"

"I'm planning to stay in the Hollow for a bit," Rory started.

"The Hollow?" Jess repeated, then snickered.

Before Rory could resume her answer, Lorelai's mobile rang. Lorelai picked it up, glanced at the caller ID then set it back down. "Is it Logan?" Rory asked nervously.

"No, it's the Inn. I'm sure Michel can't find his Post-It Notes or something. It can wait."

"Okay. Well if you don't mind… since I'm kind of a mess, I'd like to stay here at the apartment. At least for another night," she added, hedging her bets with her mother and the 'home' situation. "I really don't want Will and Ella-"

Lorelai cut her off, "Rory you don't need to make excuses. If you want to stay here, that's fine."

She could tell her mother was still a little hurt, but she was trying to be understanding. "Thanks."

"Lorelai!" Luke's voice boomed up the stairs in a loud yell as Lorelai's phone began to ring again. "Answer your fricken cell phone! If Michel calls me again to try to find you…" he trailed off.

"Sorry!" she yelled back. She flicked open her phone. "Daffy Dan's Porno Palace, how can I help you?"

Rory and Jess both started laughing at her greeting, obscuring any possibility of hearing what it was that Michel wanted on the other end of the phone. Lorelai put her finger to her lips and gave them pointed looks begging for silence.

She sighed before speaking again. "Of course it's me Michel. How many times have you called this number?" There was a small silence while Lorelai waited for an answer. "Okay fine. It's not funny. I'm sorry." This exchange caused Jess and Rory to laugh harder. "I'll be right there." She flipped her phone shut and stood up. "Duty calls. Are you going to be okay here with Jess?"

"I'm just going to go back to doing research," Rory told her.

"I'm going to try and get some work done," Jess gave Rory a playful glare. "But don't worry Lorelai, I'll keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn't do anything drastic and all."

Rory stuck her tongue out at Jess in response, and Lorelai laughed. "Come to the Inn for lunch if you need an escape."

"Okay," both Rory and Jess answered simultaneously, causing more laughing.

"I meant Rory," Lorelai clarified.

Jess feigned being shot through the heart, "Oh how you wound me! I thought we were past all this! After all, I am your nephew now."

"Shut up Jess," both women said in unison.

Lorelai hugged her daughter and smoothed her hair away from her face. "You call me if you need anything Sweets."

"Okay Mom."

"Be good Jess," Lorelai threw over her shoulder as she headed out the door.

Rory and Jess stood in silence until they heard her footsteps on the stairs. "Does she think I'm still a 17-year-old hoodlum?" Jess asked.

"Maybe," Rory admitted. "Or maybe you're still the cheater that broke her daughter's heart," she threw out.

He sighed deeply. "I'm not sure what you want me to do here Rory. I've apologized a million times. Do you want me to get 'I'm sorry' tattooed across my knuckles? You're not even married to me any more; isn't it time to let it go?"

She looked at Jess, taking the time to study him, which she hadn't done in years. He was slightly more muscular than when they were married. His hair was a little shorter, but just as dark and thick as ever. There was no chance that Jess Mariano would end up paunchy and balding. He still wore faded jeans and concert tees, but the bands were now more modern and the jeans were artfully ragged, not just ragged from years of wear. The only place he was showing any signs of aging was in his eyes. Rory finally shook her head, breaking her gaze. "Is there an aging portrait of you around here some where?" she asked.

"Yep. I kicked old Dorian out and took his place," he replied with a smile. "So are you ever going to forgive me?" he asked again, returning the subject to where it started.

"I forgave you years ago," she admitted. He let out a sigh of relief. "Like I said earlier, I know I didn't make things easy. I guess it's time I finally put the guilt trip to rest though."

Jess looked at her hesitantly. "Really?"

"Really."

He pulled her into a big hug. "I know I don't deserve it, but thanks."

"Everybody deserves forgiveness Jess. Even you," she added quietly.

After a moment or two of silence, Jess broke the hug and backed up. "So now that that's settled, can we get back to researching?"

Rory nodded. Jess went to grab his own laptop out of his messenger bag, and instead of returning to the bed, they took seats at the small table in the dining room.

* * *

><p>For the next several hours, they worked in companionable silence, only breaking the silence to share links or ideas, and soon it was lunchtime.<p>

"I'm going to head over to the Inn for lunch with my mom. Do you want to come?" Rory asked.

"Nah, it's okay. I'll just grab a burger down stairs, then get to work on my own stuff," Jess replied.

"Are you sure? Come on. You know you miss Sookie's cooking…" Rory tried to cajole him into joining her.

He sighed and looked up from his laptop. "You sure Lorelai won't mind?"

"I'm long past caring about whether my mother minds the company I keep. Besides, you'll be doing me a huge favor by helping to keep the conversation light. Goodness knows if you aren't there to make jokes I'll probably end up crying through lunch," she admitted sheepishly.

"Fine. But if it sucks, you're buying me a burger here to make up for it."

Rory snorted. "Like Luke would charge me for food. You're on."

* * *

><p>Jess held open the passenger door of his car for Rory, then went around to the drivers side as she slid in to the seat.<p>

"Nice ride Mariano. Quite an upgrade from your first car."

The new model BMW certainly was an upgrade. "Well I figured since I spend so much time on the road these days, I should at least do it in comfort and style. No need to worry about engine troubles or air conditioner malfunctions when you don't have to right?"

"That was certainly my argument behind a new car," Rory replied. "Remember our first trip back to Stars Hollow after we got married?"

"Ugh," Jess groaned. "Yes."

"I think I might still have scars on my leg from those heat blisters."

"You do not!" Jess laughed. "There were no blisters! Your leg was just red!" He pulled the car out of it's parking spot and headed toward the inn.

_8 years ago_

_Rory and Jess were making their first pilgrimage from Philly to Stars Hollow, for Richard and Emily's Annual Vow Renewal Anniversary Party. While her grandparents had generously offered to send her a plane ticket, she wanted Jess to come too, and thought the road trip would be fun. Since Rory's car was in the shop due to a fender bender, and they didn't want to pay mileage on the rental car, Jess decided they'd take his old Dodge. The car didn't get out of the city much any more, and would probably enjoy a nice long freeway drive. Right?_

_It was the heart of summer, August. A hundred degrees in the shade. The car had no AC so they were already roasting on the drive when Jess noticed that the needle in the temperature gauge was climbing steadily higher. _

"_Uh, Rory…. The engine's heating up pretty fast," he said trying to remain calm. _

"_What do we do?" she asked, as he made his way to the right lane in case the car decided to stop all together. _

"_We have to try to cool the engine some how."_

_Rory thought about it for a moment, then it hit her, "I know!" Jess looked at her quizzically. "This used to happen to one of my mom's old cars. To cool the engine a little, you just have to run the heater."_

"_The heater?" Jess repeated. As the needle surged even further into the red zone he made his choice. "I hope you're right!" He cranked the heat all the way up, and turned the fans on full blast. _

"_Holy crap!" Rory moaned as she was hit with the wall of heat. _

"_It's working!" Jess shouted as the needle slowly began to drop. "How long do we have to keep this up?"_

"_I don't know. My mom usually made short trips, so it was the last few minutes of the drive. Then the car went back to normal after it was off for a while!" _

_Jess moaned. They were just outside of New York, still at least an hour away from Stars Hallow. So they ran the heat till the engine temperature dropped below the red zone, then turned it off to give themselves a break, turning it back on only when the needle threatened to bury itself permanently in the overheated area. _

"That was probably the most miserable hour of my life!" Rory exclaimed.

"At least we made it," Jess shot back with a laugh. Rory smiled at the memory. "What?"

"I just remember thinking 'If I'd have said yes to Logan this would never have happened,'" she admitted.

"You're kidding me right?" Jess asked, suddenly serious.

"No. That thought actually crossed my mind."

Jess pulled the car off to the side of the road and turned in his seat to face Rory. "You seriously wished you'd said yes to Logan? Do you wish you'd never married me at all?"

"Way to go all melodramatic on me Jess. I didn't say I wished I'd said yes to Logan, and I never wished I'd never been married to you, even at the bitter end. Just at that one moment, I thought about how things could have been different. Don't tell me you never for a single second thought about how something would have been different if you hadn't married me."

"Never!" Jess responded vehemently.

"Ever?" Rory asked back.

"Okay fine. Maybe that day in the car I wished you'd have said yes to Logan so I wouldn't have been on my way to that stupid anniversary party in hundred degree weather," he said dryly.

"Jess!" she exclaimed. She stuck her tongue out at him and he rolled his eyes in return.

"So, honestly – no hard feelings, I promise," Jess qualified, "if you could go back and say yes to Logan the first time, would you?"

"Honestly?" she repeated.

"Honestly," he confirmed.

She sighed and looked down at her rings twirling them on her finger, stalling for a moment. "No."

"But you're happy together, right?"

Jess as a concerned friend, the concept melted her heart just a little bit. "We are. But I think if I'd have said yes all those years ago, we wouldn't have been. I wouldn't have gotten to be a foreign correspondent, and I would always doubt my talent, never knowing if I made it because of my writing, or because I was a Huntzberger. Logan probably would have been forced back to HPG sooner, and both of us would have ended up resenting each other. We probably would have ended up divorced, or worse, like his parents. You know, where he cheats, and she smokes, and in the end, they just try to put on a good show for the public. I would have hated that."

"And now?" he asked, honestly curious about her life.

Rory's eyes filled with tears as she thought about her life with Logan. "We both had the chance to grow up a little. Logan went back to HPG on his own terms, and I know I made as a newspaperwoman on my own merits. We both found out what we wanted and what we didn't. I got to be a foreign correspondent long enough to learn that it really wasn't what I wanted, and Logan learned that society marriage wasn't enough for him, and that he really does belong in the family business."

"Well I guess that makes sense."

Rory tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and bit the inside of her lip to keep from spilling the tears that were just waiting to fall. "But now… who knows."

Jess reached over and wiped the tears that were silently trailing down her cheeks. "Cheer up Gilmore. I know you. You're one of the most determined people I have ever met in my life. You will find and answer for this, and you and Captain Douchebag will live happily ever after."

"That's one!" she exclaimed, forcing her lips into a small smile.

"What? No way! That doesn't count as one. I always call Logan Captain Douchebag."

"It counts."

"Fine," Jess huffed, "but only because I know it's cheering you up on some small level."

"Thanks Jess. Now let's get to lunch."

Rory pulled down the visor on the passenger's side and fixed her makeup in the vanity mirror as Jess pulled back onto the road and continued the short journey to the Inn. Maybe Jess was right. Maybe it all would work out in the end. She smiled at the thought.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I know, I know, it's been ages. I'm sorry. <strong>

**The next chapter will find a return to Logan's point of view. Hopefully it won't be as long in the making. **

**Thanks for reading and reviewing. As usual I don't own anything. (And the line about Daffy Dan's came from a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book – I found it so funny that it's just stuck with me over the years.)**

**S**


	9. Chapter 9

After the first night, since Logan had no clue why Rory had left, or if she was coming back, he decided he'd do his best to continue with his life as normally as possible, at least during business hours. He got up, showered, dressed, and left for work. The only major modification in his morning was that instead of having coffee with his wife, he skipped coffee all together and got a cup of tea at the dodgy espresso stand Rory refused to go to. If he went to any other stand, they'd know what he wanted, and know something was off because he ordered, well, anything other than the normal.

Once he arrived at his office, his day moved along quickly. He dealt with the same people he dealt with every day, and handled the same matters in the same manner as always. In fact, the sense of normalcy actually helped him forget the disappearance of his wife, for a few moments. Some time after lunch he glanced at the time, and realized it was just about 3:00, which meant that he only had to try to hold himself together for two more hours, and then he could go home and tear the house apart trying to figure out what happened. Two hours he could do that, he just needed a project. Just as he was about to dig into the background of a company he was considering buying out (which would at least occupy two hours), his intercom buzzed.

"Mr. Huntzberger?" his assistant asked.

"It's Logan," he reminded her for the tenth time.

"Yes, sorry about that sir."

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"Oh right. Sorry. Mr. Huntzberger is here to see you."

Logan dropped his head into hands on his desk. Right. It was the third Friday of the month, Mitchum was in town. Just what he wanted to deal with. "Thanks. Send him on in."

"Sure thing."

Logan scrubbed at his face with his hands, trying to remove the evidence of his lack of sleep, and spread papers out all over his desk, trying to look busy.

_Knock, knock._ He heard the sound at his door. "Come on in."

"Hello Logan," his father said smoothly as he stepped into the office.

"Hey Dad. How was your flight?" Mitchum came to New York the third weekend of every month. He had a standing meeting with Logan on Friday afternoon, dinner with some of the editors on Friday night, time with Honor and Josh on Saturday, and he returned home to Connecticut on Sunday morning. No one asked what he did on Saturday nights. Every one knew, but no one wanted to confirm, plausible deniability.

"Short," he responded brusquely. "What's this I hear about a hitch in the Addison purchase?"

"What did you hear?" Logan asked. Last he'd checked, things were going smoothly.

"I heard that Addison wouldn't sign until he got assurances that all of his staff would be retained."

Logan scoffed, that never happened in a buy out. "Addison's dreaming and he knows it. At most he gets to keep forty percent of his staff. He's even signed the agreement. I think he's just blustering for the sake of his people. It looks better."

"If he's already signed, why isn't this done?"

"I told him we'd hold off on finalizing things until after the first of the month."

"Oh. Alright." Mitchum's bluster vanished, and he smiled at his son. "Do you and Rory want to join me for the editor's dinner tonight?"

Logan froze momentarily. Did his father know something was going on? He had an eerily accurate sixth sense on these things some times. "Uh, no thanks. We've already got plans tonight. Next time though?"

"Sure. Will we see you two at the Reynolds' anniversary party next week?"

"I think so," Logan hedged.

"Good. So how's everything else going?" Mitchum asked.

"I think things are going well. Readership is up, or at least subscriptions are, who knows if people actually read everything they subscribe to. I was just about to start digging into the Levy Group, considering buying them for their entertainment following."

"Sounds like a good plan. Everything else?"

"Everything's okay," he said, willing himself to sound convincing.

"Alright. Good. Well then I guess I can see myself out. I was mainly concerned about the Addison thing," Mitchum admitted.

"Okay." Logan stood to shake his father's hand before he left. "Hey Dad?" he asked, just as Mitchum reached the door.

"Yeah?"

"Has…" he paused, trying to figure out how to word his question without giving his situation away to his dad, but still get advice, "Has Mom ever done something off the wall…"

His father cut him off. "All the time."

"No, what I mean is, has she ever done something completely out of left field, but you have no clue why she did it?"

"Like what?" came the suspicious response.

Logan wracked his brain trying to find an episode from his childhood that might sort of fit the situation. "Okay, when I was 9, I came home from school to find Mom stapling all of your pants shut." Mitchum chuckled at Logan's memory. "I mean, now as an adult, I can look back, and her actions make sense. But did they make sense to you at the time? Did she just find out about someone or…" he trailed off. Even though his father's extra curricular activities were common knowledge, but no one ever actually spoke about them.

Mitchum cleared his throat and looked down at the floor. "They didn't make sense at the time, but a few days later I got a call from a… _lady friend_, and suddenly everything made sense."

"Why do you and Mom stay married?" Logan asked. "You don't even like each other anymore."

"Why do you and Rory stay married?" Mitchum asked in return.

Logan felt the flush of heat from his anger redden his cheeks. "Rory and I love each other. We respect each other. We also genuinely enjoy each other's company."

Mitchum shrugged. "Your mother and I love each other in our own ways. She forgives my dalliances and I forgive hers," he explained simply.

"Mom cheats too?" Logan asked, surprised by this revelation.

His father nodded.

"Why bother with being married at all then?" At this point, the questions had nothing to do with Rory, he was just merely curious.

"We're old and set in our ways. And honestly, at the end of the week, I'd rather end up at home with your mother. She understands me in a way that no one else ever has."

Logan dropped back into his chair, his head spinning with all of this new information.

"Is everything all right with you and Rory?" Mitchum asked as he made his way to the door.

"Fine," he said mechanically.

"Well I'm going to head off to dinner then. Let me know if you need anything."

Logan nodded his head woodenly, and continued to stare at the door long after it closed behind his father.

* * *

><p>After work Logan headed home. He didn't want to go out for drinks or dinner. He just wanted to be alone so he could try and figure out what the hell was going on in his life. He was just pulling into his driveway when his phone rang. He grabbed for it eagerly, hoping it was Rory, despite the fact that it wasn't her ring tone.<p>

"Hello?" he answered quickly.

"Hey Mate! How's it going?" Finn's voice came through the line.

"It's going," he said.

"I'm in town! Want to come out and meet me for dinner and drinks?"

Logan shook his head even though Finn couldn't see him. "Not tonight."

"Are you okay Mate?" Finn asked, sounding surprisingly serious. "You don't sound like yourself."

"Not really," he answered honestly.

He heard some jostling on the other end of the phone before Finn spoke again. "Are you at home? I'm coming to you."

"You don't have to Finn. I'll be fine."

Finn growled at him. "You're my best friend, and damn it I'm going to be there for you!"

Logan chuckled at Finn's absurdly honorable notions of friendship. "Fine, be my guest. I just got home. You may want to bring dinner."

"Will your lovely wife be joining us? Should I bring enough for three?"

"It'll just be the two of us," Logan told him. He hung up the phone before Finn could ask any questions. There would be plenty of time for questions later.

* * *

><p>It took forty-five minutes for Finn to get from wherever he was to Logan's door. Logan heard a quick knock then, "Mate? Where are you?" Finn had let himself in.<p>

"Kitchen," Logan called back.

Finn entered his kitchen with a bag of take out in one hand and bottle of whiskey in the other. Logan raised an eyebrow at him. "What?" Finn asked. "You sounded like you needed it."

He just shook his head in response. "What did you bring to eat?"

"Barbeque," Finn answered. "The traditional stuff. Pulled pork, ribs, corn, rolls, and mashed potatoes."

"Where'd you get that?" Logan hadn't eaten anything much since the Chinese food the night before, and despite his lack of appetite, the food did smell amazing.

Finn shrugged. "New place downtown. It's my job to know about these things." He set the bag on the counter and began to unpack it.

Logan busied himself getting plates, silverware, and glasses.

"When did we get so civilized?" Finn asked with a laugh, as Logan stuck a serving spoon in the potatoes. Finn was right. There was a time not that long ago when they would have eaten straight out of the containers on guys night. The old bite and pass routine.

"I don't want to take a chance and get a rib that you've already licked," Logan replied dryly.

Finn stuck his tongue out at him in response, but began to load his plate. When he finished loading the plate, he poured them each a very stiff drink. "Where are we eating, Mate?"

"The den's as good a place as any," Logan replied.

Both men carried their drinks and plates into the den and settled themselves on the couch. Neither of them were sports fans, so instead Logan flipped on the dinner time reruns. An old rerun of Friends came on, and they ate in silence as they watched Monica and Chandler have their first weekend away together.

After the food was mostly eaten, Finn pushed his plate back and shifted in his seat to look at Logan. "What's going on Mate? Where's Rory?"

Logan was surprised at Finn's seriousness, but still didn't know how to answer. "Dunno. Boston maybe," he said finally.

"What?" Finn practically screamed. All Logan could do was shrug. "When? Why?" Each of Finn's questions got louder.

Logan looked down at his plate sadly shook his head.

"Seriously Huntz, what the hell's going on here?"

"Don't you think I'd tell you if I knew?" Logan said sharply.

"Please tell me you're kidding about all of this."

"Damn it Finn, this isn't something I'd fucking joke about!" Logan yelled.

Being yelled at seemed to be the impetus that Finn needed to realize that his friend was serious. "What happened?" he asked quietly.

Logan leaned forward to catch his head in his hands. "I don't know. I came home to a note yesterday."

"A note?"

"Dear Logan, You deserve better than me. I'm sorry," he paraphrased.

Finn looked shocked. "What the hell? That doesn't sound like Rory. Has anything out of the ordinary happened lately?"

He shook his head. "I can't think of anything. Wednesday night we went out to dinner, talked about our upcoming calendars, and tried to find a time to vacation. All seemed right with the world."

"She hasn't been distant or overly attentive lately?" Finn asked. He could read between the lines.

Logan snorted. "You think Rory would cheat on me?" He lifted his head to meet Finn's eyes. "No way. Not after what happened with Jess."

"Okay Mate. Have you been through the house with a fine toothed comb looking for clues?"

"As best as I could. I even went into Rory's office," he admitted.

"What makes you think she's in Boston?"

"I called Paris," he said sheepishly.

Finn laughed. "I can't imagine that went well."

"Like a lead balloon," Logan confirmed. "But I know where she is, and Paris will call if something happens. She may not like me, but she does love Rory."

Finn nodded. "Okay, then what do we do?"

"Get drunk?" Logan suggested.

"As you wish." Finn got up to retrieve the bottle of whiskey he brought and a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator.

* * *

><p>Logan woke up with the sun streaming in across his face. He squinted to take in his surroundings. He seemed to be in his own den, in his recliner. There was a loud noise coming from somewhere nearby. He pushed his legs down on the footrest to help himself into an upright position. According to the clock on the wall it was 10:30, and a glance around the room told him that the loud noise was Finn passed out on the couch, snoring. He heard a faint buzz and began to pat at the surrounding areas in search of his phone. Eventually he found the phone wedged under the arm of the chair.<p>

He unlocked the phone to find that the buzzing was a missed call from Honor. He looked at his phone in horror, wondering he'd drunk dialed Rory. He quickly scrolled through his call list, grateful to not find any recent calls to Rory in the list. He then switched to text messages. There was only one he sent. It was the same as the night before. _I love you, I miss you, please come home. _And surprisingly, there was a response from her. _I love you too._

The sound of Finn's snores got louder again, and Logan flung a nearby pillow at him. Finn made a startled noise, then rolled over. His phone started buzzing again, and it was a second call from Honor. He gingerly pushed himself into a standing position, and made his way out of the den to take the call, not wanting to wake Finn just yet.

"Hello?" he whispered into the phone.

"Logan?" Honor asked, then continued before he could answer. "What's going on with you?"

"Nothing," he answered in a normal voice. "I just woke up. Finn stayed over last night."

Honor laughed. "I can't believe Rory lets you have drunken boys night still."

He shrugged even though she couldn't see him. "It's part of who I am."

"So, do you and Rory want to come for lunch with Dad today? When I talked to him this morning, he seemed bummed that he didn't get to see you guys last night."

Logan sighed, hating to lie to his sister. "Sorry, we can't we already have plans today."

"Let me talk to Rory," Honor said, knowing her sister-in-law was one to try and please everyone.

"She's in the shower," he lied.

"Who's in the shower?" Finn asked, coming into the room behind him.

"Rory," Logan answered.

"Oh good. I'm so glad she decided to come home," Finn replied sleepily. "Has she made coffee?"

"Come home from where?" Honor asked.

"I have to go," Logan told his sister, trying to rush off the phone. He shot Finn a dirty look, but he was already shuffling off to the kitchen.

"Logan, wait! Where did Rory go? Why did she decide to come home?" He could hear the panic in his sister's voice. "Why haven't I heard anything about this yet?"

He sighed loudly. "Not everything is your business Honor."

She snorted on the other end of the phone. "Yeah right. As your big sister, it's my right and privilege to know every detail of your life."

"Later Honor," he said sharply.

"Just tell me, is everything okay?" she asked. She was genuinely concerned.

"No." He disconnected the phone before she could ask any more questions.

He set the phone down and scrubbed at his eyes, finally ran his hands through his messy bed head.

"There's no coffee," Finn announced as he returned from the kitchen.

Logan exhaled loudly. "I just woke up."

A confused expression appeared on Finn's face. "I thought you said Rory was home."

"No. I was trying to get out of lunch with my father, and when Honor wanted to talk to Rory I told her that Rory was in the shower. That's when you came in and blew the whole thing," Logan shouted.

"Sorry Mate," Finn said, not sounding the least bit apologetic.

Logan groaned. "It's okay. I just didn't want to tell my family about this until I knew a little more. God knows my mother is likely to throw a party, and put an add in the newspaper to search for the new Mrs. Logan Huntzberger."

Finn clasped Logan on the shoulder. "Don't give up Mate, I'm sure this is all some big misunderstanding and she'll be home soon. And I'm sure Mitchum will keep Shira in check for a little while."

Logan nodded, then headed for the kitchen to make some coffee.

* * *

><p>The rest of Logan's weekend passed in a blur. Not that it went by quickly, just that he was so out of it that he didn't pay much attention to the time. He wandered around the house looking for clues as to why Rory left. He reread her goodbye note a hundred times, hoping for enlightenment. But in the end, when Sunday night came he knew nothing more than he did on Thursday night.<p>

Around 11:00, he finally decided that he'd done all he could, and that it was time to go to bed. He stripped down to his boxers and his undershirt and slid into the bed. He texted Rory his nightly message and picked up his book to read for a while. He didn't know how long he'd been reading when his phone chimed, he looked down expecting it to be Rory, surprised to find that it was Paris. _She's in Stars Hollow now._ Well, that was something. He sent a return message. _Thank you._

Just as he set his phone down, it went off again. This time it was his nightly message from Rory. He was no closer to finding out what was going on, but at least she still loved him.

* * *

><p>Monday brought a sense of normalcy. He got up and went to work, like everything was normal. He didn't get any calls from his father, so he knew Honor hadn't said anything. He also hadn't gotten any calls from Honor, which surprised him. Usually hanging up on her was a sure fire way to ensure she bombarded him with calls, texts, and emails. Josh must have talked some sense into her.<p>

As the days passed he considered calling Lorelai again, but he was pretty sure she wouldn't give him any information. It was to his great surprise that his phone rang on Wednesday morning and Lorelai's number was in the caller id.

"Hello?" he answered nervously. He'd been anticipating bad news for days.

"It's not Rory," Lorelai told him quickly.

He tried to suppress a sigh. "I didn't think it was," he lied.

"She's in Stars Hollow," she said quietly.

"I know."

"How?" He could picture the curious look on his mother-in-law's face.

"Paris sent me a text on Sunday night."

"How come you haven't come to get her since you know where she is?" Lorelai asked.

Logan had asked himself the same question time and time again. He stood up from his desk and began to pace around his office. "I don't know," he told her honestly. "I don't know why she left, so I don't know how she'll react if I just show up."

"It's been a week, aren't you the least bit curious?"

He let out a frustrated sigh. "Honestly, I've been going out of my mind!"

Lorelai was silent for a moment. He could tell she was working up the courage to say something. "If you come now, and it goes badly, I'll take the heat."

He laughed bitterly. "Things must be really bad if you're willing to take the heat off me. You hate me."

"I don't hate you Logan," she replied. "But yes, things are really bad."

"What's going on?" he asked, hoping for a tiny bit of insight.

"Nope," she said quickly, and he could imagine her standing in front of him, shaking her head. "It's not my story to tell. I'm just calling to tell you that you need to come here and hear it."

"Alright. I've got a meeting at 2:00, but I'll leave right after that. I'll probably be at your place around 6:30."

Logan could hear Lorelai taking a deep breath before she started to talk again. "She's not staying with me. She's staying at the apartment above Luke's."

"Oh," Logan said, surprised at the turn of events. "Why?"

"Part of the story, you'll have to find out from her."

He groaned. "Fine. Since when is there an apartment above Luke's?" he asked curiously. He'd never been there. "Who lives there?"

"There's always been an apartment there. No one lives in it currently, but Luke lived there before we got married. Jess and Rory used to stay there when-" she cut herself off. "Never mind."

"Lorelai!" he exclaimed.

"It's part of the story!" she told him hastily. "I'll see you later."

Before he could respond, he was greeted with a dial tone. "Damn it Lorelai," he muttered as he hung up his phone.

If Jess was around… well, he didn't necessarily want to panic, but Jess had always been a bone of contention in their relationship. His mind drifted to a memory.

_Three years earlier… a week before the wedding_

_Logan entered the living room to find Rory curled up on the couch with a cup of coffee in her hand, staring out the window. "Hey Ace, how was your day?" _

_She jolted in her seat, obviously surprised by his presence. "Logan, hey. How are you?"_

"_What's going on? Are you okay?" he asked. "You seem kind of out of it."_

"_I'm fine." She smiled up at him, but he could tell the smile was forced. _

_He walked over to the couch and took a seat next to her. "What's going on Rory? Are you having second thoughts?" _

"_Oh no, nothing like that," she said quickly. "I… I just talked to Jess today."_

"_Your ex husband Jess?" he asked to clarify. "Why?"_

_She bit her lower lip nervously and focused on the coffee in her cup. "He just called to catch up." _

_Logan shook his head, not believing her. "You haven't spoken to him in over a year and he just happens to call to catch up the week before we get married? I'm not buying it." _

_She shrugged. "I don't know, maybe my mom or Luke mentioned the wedding." _

"_What did he want?" Logan asked brusquely._

"_He's going to be in town on Friday and wants to have lunch," she said quietly._

"_WHAT?" Logan exploded. "Please tell me you said no!" _

"_It's just lunch," she said as she looked up from her coffee and met his eyes. "It's no big deal."_

_Logan stood up from the sofa and began to pace. "So you'd be alright with me having lunch with Emory then?"_

_Rory stumbled over her words, and even though she said it would be fine, he knew she didn't mean it. "It's different with Jess," she told him. _

_He rolled his eyes in response. _

"_Jess is family. I know it sucks sometimes, but that's just the way it is." Her position had shifted into one of stubbornness, and he knew if he kept at it, the argument would only escalate. _

_Logan threw his hands in the air and walked out of the room. Sometimes it was best just to walk away. He knew she had a point, but that didn't mean he had to like it. He went into his office and did his best to focus on work. It wasn't long before he heard the tap of Rory's shoes. He forced himself not to look up, and soon he felt her hands on his shoulders. _

"_I'm sorry Logan," she whispered. "I'll cancel if you want me to."_

_He shook his head. "I don't want to get in between you and your family," he told her. "Let me be clear. I don't like this one bit, and I'm not at all comfortable with it. But for the sake of family relations, I'm going to let it go. I don't need to give your mother another reason to hate me."_

"_She doesn't hate you Logan," Rory said for probably the hundredth time in their relationship. "But thank you."_

"_Just try not to make a habit out of it," he said with a small smile. _

Realistically, he knew that Rory and Jess were no longer right for each other. He knew that, until last week, he and Rory were happily married, and Rory would never go back to Jess. But yet somehow, despite all of that knowledge, the mere mention of Jess set his nerves on edge.

* * *

><p>Work seemed to drag on endlessly as Logan waited for his meeting to start. Once the meeting did start, every minute seemed to take an hour. By the time the meeting was over, Logan couldn't have said what it was about, he was just grateful it was over.<p>

He stopped at his assistant's desk and told her he was leaving for the day and there was a distinct possibility he wouldn't be in tomorrow.

He took the elevator to the garage, and pulled his car out into traffic. He headed north just as fast as traffic would allow.

* * *

><p>It was just before 7:00 when he finally made it to Stars Hollow. He parked the car in an empty spot in front of Luke's and checked out his appearance in the vanity mirror. He stepped out of the car and headed to the dinner. He stopped just outside the window and looked in.<p>

There, sitting at the table in front of the window, was his wife. There were papers spread across the table, along with a cup of coffee and a half eaten plate of fries. Sitting next to her was a tall dark haired man, Jess. Both of them were laughing hysterically. He couldn't believe it! Anger seethed through his veins.

Logan didn't mean to disrupt them, but he put his hands on the window, and the noise startled them. Both heads turned to face the window.

"Logan?" Rory asked.

He looked at Rory, then at Jess, dropped his hands and turned to go back to his car.

"Logan wait!" Rory shouted.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I know, it's been a while! I hadn't been writing much, then I started on Half Of My Heart, and that one's just been flowing, but I found half of this chapter the other day and decided to work on it! So here it is.<strong>

**I hope you enjoyed it! Please read and review! The next chapter will have the first present day Rory/Logan interaction! **

**S**


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